


With your thirst and with my hunger

by SecondSecret



Series: You want a (revolution) [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Capella, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Puns, Enjolras Was A Charming Young Man Who Was Capable Of Being Terrible, F/M, Gavroche is more competent than you are, Grantaire and Bossuet fight but also love each other, M/M, Marius is a fuzzy duckling, Miscommunication, Multi, Oblivious Enjolras, Other, Pining, Slow Burn, genderqueer Bahorel, Éponine is so done with everyone's drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 16:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 56,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3454541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSecret/pseuds/SecondSecret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine made a point of hating a cappella. She just attended ABC concerts for Marius. And somehow she ended up ushering. And running sound. And watching the alcoholic assistant pitch fawn over their glorious leader. And trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the jolly one, the bald one, and the scary girl with dimples. Éponine has problems of her own, you know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. what might be

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta reader (and enthusiastic cheerleader) elentari7. This fic would never have made it into writing if she hadn't stayed awake until sunrise listening to me talk about it. <3

 

 

 _I am what you want me to be_  
_And I'm your worst fear, you'll find it in me_  
_Come closer, come closer_  
_I am more than memory_  
_I am what might be, I am mystery_  
_You know me, so show me_

 _\-- "I'm Alive,"_ Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal)

 

**September**

For the first two weeks of college, Éponine made a point of hating a cappella. It was mostly the principle of the matter. If a bunch of obnoxiously attractive rich kids wanted to stand around singing, "do do do," that was their business; but by the time the eighth flier was shoved in her face with a chipper, "do you sing?", she wanted to paste a sticker to her forehead that read, "NO, I DON'T FUCKING SING."

She would have done it, too, but the only friend she had made so far was a foreign breed of college student who didn't like cursing.

That was how she felt about Marius in general, really: he was a foreign breed, more deer than person, all freckled cheekbones and doe eyes and confused smiles. He had the painful earnestness of someone who had never really been disappointed, and the careless sweetness of someone nobody had ever really been mean to.

No one had ever been sweet to Éponine without having a reason.

And that was why, at ten in the morning on a sunny Saturday, she was neither sleeping nor starting her three problem sets. She was standing in a crowded, sweaty gym with what seemed to be half the student population, being herded from one station to another like livestock. Because Marius couldn't find the freshman bazaar without getting lost, and Éponine couldn't pass up an opportunity to stand next to him. 

Marius eagerly looked at every card he was handed, because of course he did. Éponine glared and hoped they would be out of the glorified cattle market before brunch closed.

"Why are they advertising the _senior all-male a cappella group?"_ she demanded as they passed to the next booth.

"Early advertisement, I guess?" Marius looked at the flier and looked horrified. "'Whiffenpoof?' Is that a slur of some kind?" 

This got a delighted laugh from the boy at the next booth. _"You_ are exactly the kind of person we need," he declared. 

Marius looked startled. 

The boy stood and clapped a hand on Marius's shoulder. "I'm sure you've been asked many times if you sing, but have you been asked about what you sing _for?"_

"Um," Marius replied, which was fair.

"Or have you thought about all the paper being wasted at this affair?"

"It is kind of a shame," Marius agreed, looking at the pile of fliers in his hands with big, droopy eyes.

Éponine snorted. The boy grinned at her easily. "And what's _your_ name?"

"I'm Miss Can't Sing."

"All-male group," he replied, like that was supposed to be reassuring instead of obnoxious. "I'm Courfeyrac, and _you,"_ he turned to Marius again, "should audition."

Marius's eyes lit up as Courfeyrac described the all-male alternative a cappella group that was apparently called the ABC and focused on “progressive values” and “performing at venues that share our values -- you know, orphanages and all-night sit-down protest things.” Of course, his eyes had also lit up about the two student journals and three improv groups and every. Single. Language. Table. So Éponine didn't think too much of it, yet.

\--

She walked him to his audition for the ABC whatever-it-stood-for the next weekend. It was right after brunch, and he didn't seem to mind, so why not.

The most excited person she had met in a long string of excited people ushered them in with remarkable dexterity for a boy with a cane. "Hello, hello! You're here for ABC auditions, right?"

"I'm not," Éponine snapped, because that should be obvious.

"Well, you can stay for moral support if you want! We have so much chocolate, take some chocolate, everyone's going to get diabetes, I'm Joly by the way." He spurted it all out like one sentence. Marius and Éponine just stared.

Auditions were in a courtyard, and Joly wasn't kidding: the members of the group sat behind tables piled with miniature Snickers and Butterfingers and Kit-Kats. She shrugged, grabbed a handful, and dropped onto a foldout chair. 

The leader of the group was immediately apparent; he just radiated _"everybody look at me!"_ , even though he had the face of a freshman. He was a typical a cappella pretty boy, blue eyes and perfect lips and ridiculous blond hair. They all had ridiculous hair, actually. Marius would fit right in, she thought fondly; he had switched hair gel four times in the three weeks she had known him.

Éponine touched the tattered ends of her long, dark hair. She jerked her hand away as soon as she caught herself, not that anyone was watching her.

The leader sat behind a table, Courfeyrac to his left and--Éponine blinked--a very small Indian girl with shorn hair to his right. "I thought this was an all-male group," she whispered to Marius, who was nervously reviewing his lyrics.

Marius blinked as if he had forgotten she was there. "What?"

"Never mind." She looked away from him and inspected the other members of the group who were present--a balding African-American boy who sat beside Joly and periodically leaned to talk to him, and a boy with greasy black hair and a big nose. The latter sprawled on a chair with a lazy half-smirk and watched the leader instead of the auditions. If he hadn't been beside one of the chocolate-piled tables and wearing a green version of the group shirt, she would have thought he was a random student who had stolen one of the chairs.

The leader's pretty face stayed as still as marble as several nervous freshmen falsettoed through the same vaguely stalkery song about how alive they were, but he did sigh heavily after one had left. The short girl poked Leader-boy with a pencil. 

She thought Marius gave a good audition, but she was a little biased. He definitely gave an earnest interview, lighting up and talking passionately about social justice issues that made Éponine roll her eyes. The boys asking the questions were obviously rich. Leader-boy's skin was too smooth. 

Greasy-hair caught her eyes as they were rolling. He winked. Éponine's instinct was to scowl--boys never winked at her unless they wanted something--but his eyes immediately went back to Leader-boy, so her scowl would probably have been misplaced. 

"Well, it looks like the next two people didn't show up," Greasy-hair remarked. He looked too cheerful about it. "Not surprising, since it's the two Bald Eagle signed up."

"Yeah, that sounds right," Bald Eagle, as Éponine already knew she would be calling him forever, said. He also sounded cheerful. Maybe it was all the sugar. 

Leader-boy frowned at Greasy-hair. "At least he bothered to ask students to audition."

"It's a good thing," Joly said quickly. "We've been out in the sun eating all this sugar, I think I'm going to be sick--" 

Éponine wasn't sure why they needed to be here for this talk, but Marius was just standing around fiddling with his hair, so she stayed seated.

"I needed the sugar to sit through eight attempts at 'I'm Alive,'" said Greasy-hair.

"That's _actually what the song is called?"_ Éponine asked, appalled. Greasy-hair grinned at her. She didn't grin back, but she didn't scowl, either. 

“It’s because our glorious leader here sang it when the fetuses were visiting”--it took her a moment to realize he meant the accepted-student visiting days of the year before, which she hadn’t attended because she could afford neither the transportation nor the time off work--“and all the wee freshman boys want in his pants.” 

Marius looked appalled. Courfeyrac, Joly, and Bald Eagle looked like they agreed with Greasy-hair. The tiny one (who Éponine had gathered was a trans boy named Combeferre) put his head in his hands and sighed deeply. 

Leader-boy frowned. “It’s a lack of creativity and blatant pandering. Furthermore, it _isn’t how the song sounds.”_  

“Well, give us a demonstration, then,” Greasy-hair proposed, lip tilting into a smile. “Impress the wee freshling and his angry friend.” 

“Gender-neutral descriptors are less useful for an all-male group,” Combeferre informed him. _Do people actually talk like that?_ Éponine mouthed at Greasy-hair, who did an impressive job of replying, _I know, right?_ using only his eyelids. 

“Not trying to be PC here,” Greasy-hair drawled. “He just reminds me of a fuzzy little duckling.”

Marius looked uncomfortable.

“Between the two of you, we’re going to scare off all our freshmen,” Courfeyrac said, in what he clearly thought was a lowered voice. Éponine didn't scare easily, but she supposed she didn't count.

“I’m not scared!” Marius assured them quickly. “I would love to hear your song,” he told Leader-boy politely.

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate,” Combeferre began, in the tired voice of someone who already knew his argument would be ignored, but felt obligated to object anyway (Éponine knew because it was the same voice she had used when trying to tell her little brother not to do something.)

“Oh, come on, the duckling already said he wanted to see. Didn't you?” Greasy-hair asked Marius, who bobbed his head in something that looked less like a _yes_ and more like a  _maybe if I move my head, people will stop looking at me_.Indeed, Greasy-hair immediately turned to raise his eyebrows challengingly at Leader-boy, who sighed and stood up. Greasy-hair whooped, “yeah, take off your shirt!”

Leader-boy glanced at his red shirt before jerking his gaze forward and breaking into something that barely resembled the nervous renditions Éponine had suffered through. He didn’t sound like an awkward stalker; he sounded like a serial killer whose crooning _“come clo-oser”_ could charm victims into the path of his bullet. Everyone in the courtyard stopped what they were doing and turned into a captive audience.

Éponine preferred Marius’s shakier but much sweeter vocals to Leader-boy’s powerful ones, the same way she preferred his gawky prettiness to leader-boy’s marble-statue good looks. But it was fun to watch Greasy-hair's breath hitch when Leader-boy sang lines like,  _"I own you."_

After a blatantly show-offy riff of “I’m a- _li-i-i-I-IVE,”_ Leader-boy shot Greasy-hair a sour look. “Happy?”

Greasy-hair abruptly switched his expression from the wide-mouthed, glassy-eyed stare of a toad watching a bird fly to the look of lazy insolence he had worn before the singing started. “I dunno, wasn’t there supposed to be a pole involved? It’s not a proper performance without pole-dancing.”

Leader-boy turned to Marius. “I apologize for him. We’ll let you know our decision within a week.”

\--

The next time she saw Greasy-hair, he was drunk out of his mind, which was ridiculous because it was 7 PM on a Wednesday.

He greeted her on the sidewalk with a sloppy grin and a near-stumble. “Hey! Angry Girl, right? The Duckling’s friend?”

“My name is Éponine.” 

“Oh, names.” He waved a hand. “Who needs ’em? We all use our last name, ’cept Jehan, but his name isn't actually Jehan anyway. And Bald Eagle calls himself, like, a nickname from high school French class, but that’s just ’cause he was afraid me calling him Bald Eagle would catch on. Which I call him anyway. So.” 

She spent enough time listening to drunken rambles that it was easy to guess that Bald Eagle's real name probably sounded like 'eagle.' “And your last name is?” She couldn’t even think of him as Greasy-hair at the moment, because his hair wasn’t greasy, just a wild mess of dark curls.

“Grantaire, but call me R.” He flopped onto the sidewalk as smoothly and easily as if it were a couch. “You smoke?” 

“Not right now.” She smoked a lot, but she planned to drop by Marius’s suite to go over a chemistry problem set that she knew neither of them really needed help with, and he didn’t like the smell. Grantaire shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Why R?” 

“It’s a French pun. My whole life is a French pun. Or a Greek pun. Or sometimes even an English pun! Those are always refreshing.” He kept right on babbling things she didn’t understand. She got the vague impression that he was very smart--of course, everyone who went to this school was smart, even if Marius had been shocked that majoring in Linguistics wouldn’t just mean learning all the languages he wanted--but mostly she got the impression that he was going to have a terrible hangover in the morning. The cigarette glowed in his hand as he waved his arms. 

“You were a Classics major?” she hazarded.

He laughed. He either smoked much more or much less than she did, because he didn’t break into a hacking cough. Éponine always did, when she laughed while smoking. “Sure. Classics major, poli sci major, history major. Comp lit for like two weeks. Came in planning to be an art major, but I kept getting distracted--picking apples instead of painting the apple tree, that sort of thing. So much for me.” He blew a puff of smoke and Éponine inhaled instinctively, before remembering she was supposed to be meeting Marius. 

She scowled. “Don’t blow smoke at me.” 

“’Kay.” Unbothered by her scowl, he turned his face away. “Philosophy major now.” 

“Wait. You were _too lazy_ for art, so you switched to _philosophy.”_ Éponine wasn’t afraid of difficult majors; she was a Mechanical Engineering major, for crying out loud, and damn proud of it, but she had visited one philosophy lecture for one day and gotten a terrible headache from the first half-page. 

Grantaire turned back to her with a lopsided grin. “Sure. All philosophy requires is reading and bullshitting. I happen to be a master.” He took another puff of smoke and turned his head again to blow away from her. “Duckling’s in, by the way. Don’t tell him I said that. Big secret.” 

“Are you going to keep calling him that?” 

“I’m sure not going to call him _Pontmercy.”_  

He had a point. 

“So I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you?” he asked, facing her again. 

“I don’t like a cappella.”

He shrugged. “Me neither.” 

“You’re just really dedicated to the cause?” she asked wryly. 

He turned away. “Just really dedicated to something.” He stood as abruptly as he had sat, and stumbled again. Éponine had to consciously stop herself from catching him by the waist. Touching rambling, drunk men was a bad instinct. Showing up to Marius’s suite smelling like smoke and sweat didn’t sound great, either. 

Grantaire dropped the cigarette without putting it out. “Is that a fire hazard?” Éponine asked, less because she cared and more because she wasn’t sure he remembered she was there.

“You can’t light concrete,” Grantaire tossed over his shoulder. He took a step forward, stopped, and knelt to pick the cigarette up. “Wouldn’t want to litter,” he explained, sounding defensive for no clear reason.

But then, Éponine thought as she finally resumed walking to Marius’s suite, it was hardly the strangest thing about the conversation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the song Juramidam by Nick Mulvey. The series title comes from the song No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine (but with Grantaire changing the lyrics to annoy Enjolras.) Both the songs will come up in the story later. :)
> 
> Also, if you have never heard Aaron Tveit singing I'm Alive from Next to Normal, you should get to Youtube ASAP.


	2. know that I am gone

_Lord I'm one, lord I'm two, lord I'm three, lord I'm four_  
_Lord I'm five hundred miles from my home_  
_Five hundred miles, five hundred miles, five hundred miles, five hundred miles_  
_Lord, I'm five hundred miles from my home_  
_Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name_  
_Lord, I can't go home this way_

  -- _"500 Miles,"_ Peter, Paul, and Mary version

 

**September part 2**

In many ways, college was easier than home had been. Éponine’s scholarship covered not only her tuition, but also a sunny single room in a suite of six, and three meals per day. Since she didn’t have a phone plan, her old iPhone didn't have a working microphone, and the campus computer labs were too quiet to Skype in, she never had to talk to her parents. There was, however, wireless internet all over campus. Éponine’s little sister had sold her phone two years ago, but their little brother still had his, and he was a master at finding free wi-fi, so he sent her iMessages at least a couple times a week.

 **From Gavroche, August 23:** _so hopefully u’ll decide tomorrow that your fancy school is dumb? c u tomorrow! :D  
_ **From Gavroche, August 23:** _jk don’t come back tomorrow MY SISTER IS A NERD embrace it._

 **From Gavroche, August 26:** _IF U MISS THE TRAIN I’M ON_  
**From Gavroche, August 26:** _U WILL KNOW THAT I AM GONE_  
**From **Éponine** , August **26** : ** _You know that’s going to be stuck in my head for days._  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _that’s not ur line_  
**From **Éponine** , August **26** : ** _Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name_  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _NO NO NO_  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _ur supposed to hear the whistle blow_  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _and then we say 100 miles 100 miles 100 miles 100 miles_  
**From **Éponine** , August **26** : ** _I think it’s A hundred miles, actually._  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _ooooh fancy college girl remembers the lines AFTER she already skipped them_  
**From **Éponine** , August **26** : ** _That’s what you get for getting songs stuck in my head._  
**From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _now u can annoy other people by singing when u do homework  
_ **From Gavroche, August **26** : ** _is it still called homework when you live in school_

 **From Gavroche, August 28:** _better question: can you go a-home this-away_  
**From Éponine, August 28:** _Did you deliberately time that to be just when I got it out of my head?_  
**From Gavroche, August 28:** _i know u so well :D_

 **Unsent in Éponine's drafts, September 1:** _The laundry machines only accept credit cards or quarters. Who does that?_

 **From Gavroche, September 4:** _i swear to god dad just cooked a's cat_  
**From Gavroche, September 4:** _i stole two of the legs and fed it to mice_  
**From Gavroche, September 4:** _the mice need it more anyway_  
**From Gavroche, September 4:** _u should have seen mom she was PISSED  
_ **From Gavroche, September 4:** _u know ur realllll talkative this time of night_

 **Unsent in Éponine's drafts, September 4:** _I liked that cat. Before you were born, I would dress it up and tell Azelma to pretend it was a doll._

 **From Éponine, September 5:** _Can’t you behave for one day?_  
**From Gavroche, September 5:** _We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not operational._  
**From Éponine, September 5:** _I didn’t dial a number.  
_**From Gavroche, September 5:** _come on lady I used punctuation for u_  

 **From Gavroche, September 9:** _oh my god this old bitch is muttering to her son about how i have an iPhone but no shoes YOUR LITTLEST KID IS HOLDING A KINDLE IS HE EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO READ_  
**From Gavroche, September 9:** _and the big 1’s shoes are worth like 60 shoes_  
**From Éponine, September 9:** _Fuck her._  
**From Gavroche, September 9:** _ew no thank you shes got more botox than dad did when he was taking botox_  
**From Éponine, September 9:** _Steal the big one’s shoes.  
_ **From Gavroche, September 9:** _best. sister. ever._

Periods, Éponine knew, were his way of saying he loved her.

It was typical of their life, to have old iPhones but no phone plan. All her clothes were expensive, but none of them fit, and they were losing color from too many rough scrubs with bad soap. She never had enough quarters for the laundry machine.

\--

For the first time in her life, classes were actual work.

Mechanical Engineering had more prerequisites than some other majors had requirements, so she was taking Multivariable Calculus for Engineers, Chemistry, Intensive General Physics, physics lab, and Advanced Mandarin to get her language requirement out of the way. All the interesting student jobs happened during her class times, but that was fine--evening work at the library paid better than any (legal) job she had ever had, and she spent half her shift doing her homework anyway.

She rarely saw her suitemates, which was even more fine. They were all smiling, shiny-haired girls who spent the first two weeks inviting her to restaurants and movies without bothering to think that the girl with holes in half her clothes might not have ten dollars to waste. After enough refusals, they stopped bothering to invite her, or even bothering to talk to her, except to make sweet passive-aggressive comments about her tendency to sing or hum while doing her homework. She listened to their inside jokes and giddy film recaps and determined that they wouldn’t have wanted to be her friend, even if she had the time or money to try.

As far as she could tell, most people made friends in their clubs, and she didn’t join any. There was Marius, who smiled at her when she sat next to him in Chemistry and let her follow him to lunch. It made Monday, Wednesday, and Friday her favorite days of the week, in spite of the two-hour physics lab on Monday afternoons.

For the first few weeks of school, she saw him outside class as well. Marius was quiet and timid, polite but not outgoing, and he never directly asked anyone for company. But once or twice a week, he posted a Facebook status saying something like, “anyone up for a walk?” or “who wants to hang out Friday night? :)” Éponine, whose Facebook had no pictures and didn’t use her last name, always laughed when she saw it it, but she always messaged saying she was free, and he always responded with exclamation marks and smiley faces.

And then he got into the ABC, and suddenly he had rehearsal three times a week. Someone from the group started sitting with them in Chemistry -- a skinny Asian boy who wore layered tank tops and garishly bright jeggings and way too much mascara (Éponine was a fan of eye makeup herself, but there had to be a limit somewhere, and this kid’s eyelashes were just plain clumping together.) She minded a little on the Monday that it happened, but Jehan Prouvaire was so quiet and helplessly sweet that on Wednesday she didn’t mind as much, and on Friday when he was in class before Marius, she took the seat next to him without thinking about it.

Marius didn’t post anything on Facebook that night. She was embarrassed by how many times she checked.

\--

That Saturday, Éponine was partway to the library cafe, which let her transfer meal swipes into purchases, when her phone gave the little whistle that was Gavroche’s iMessage tone (as if she really needed custom tones when only one person ever messaged her.) She smiled instinctively and pulled it from the pocket that she had stitched into her skirt.

 **From Gavroche:** _ran away_

She stopped walking, and was still staring at the phone when it whistled again.

 **From Gavroche:** _no big deal just thought u would want to know_

She kept staring at the phone. 

Their mom hated Gavroche. She hated boys in general. (Once, when Éponine was younger and more fanciful, she thought the reason Gavroche grew his hair long and kicked and screamed about haircuts might be a silent apology for being a boy. Then she remembered Gavroche never apologized for anything, and if anything it was a silent middle finger.) He had run away before. He always came back.

But he always came back for Éponine.

She tried to put her phone back in her pocket and nearly dropped it. She turned around and started walking.

It was a sunny day. Someone was playing frisbee. A cluster of undergraduate and graduate students were hitting each other with foam swords.

Éponine registered these facts, her brain working on a numb staccato.

Years of learning how to lie had taught her well; it was easy to smile sweetly and have someone let her into her own building. She didn’t really think about what she was doing as she knocked the door. 

One of Marius’s suitemates answered. “Oh, you’re Marius’s friend, right?” 

It gave her a little thrill, that he recognized her. She was over often enough that she was _Marius’s friend._ The thrill felt strange and electric amid the numb that had taken over.

“Um, one sec.” He ducked back into the room. She dimly heard words exchanged, and then Marius was in front of her. The sight of his sweet, freckled face immediately made her feel more grounded.

“’Ponine?”

Éponine opened her mouth and realized she had no idea what to say. No idea why she was here. 

Marius squinted. It wasn’t sleepiness, because Marius was one of those bizarre creatures who always woke up for breakfast.

“Hey there.” Éponine’s voice came out strange. 

Marius blinked. “Um. This may sound weird, but. Do you need a hug?” 

They never hugged. Between his shyness and her...other things, the closest they came to contact was Éponine leaning near him when they were studying together. Now, though, she blurted, “oh god yes,” and buried her face into his t-shirt.

His body was warm and thin and he stroked her hair as if it wasn’t full of split ends. Éponine took a shuddering breath. People touching her hair always made her want to cry.

He smelled clean. Laundry detergent and soap. It made her head feel clearer.

In retrospect, that was the moment when her crush turned into something else. The moment she knocked on his door, so numb she couldn’t feel her hand turning white from its grip on her phone, and he brought her back into her body by putting his arms around her, was the moment she was well and truly _fucked._  

“Hey, Marius, are--oh! Am I interrupting something?” 

“No,” Marius replied immediately, and Éponine unlatched herself with reluctance. He smiled at her apologetically. No one else smiled like him, she thought. He had to have the whitest teeth in the world. “I’m so sorry, I’m in the middle of a voice lesson or, well, he calls it solo coaching.” 

“Dude, she can stay if she wants!” Courfeyrac grinned at them both. “More the merrier.”

“You’re inviting me to watch your voice lesson.” It was supposed to sound skeptical. It just came out tired.

“Yeah. Joly and Bossuet always sit around for each other’s solo coaching, and R sits in when Enjolras teaches. I mean, they all _say_ it’s because they want to learn.”

“I’ll bet,” Éponine snorted. Courfeyrac looked tremendously proud of her, because apparently he was one of those extroverts who treated everyone like a close personal friend. She knew a lot of people like that, and she didn’t trust any of them.

Marius gave her a confused look which was, frankly, precious. But, polite as always, he offered, “if you want to stay, you can, of course!”

“Sure, why not?” Éponine made herself shrug instead of clinging to him with gratitude. 

“Great!” Courfeyrac reached over to pat her on the shoulder.

She jerked away and snapped, “back off!”

His hand immediately dropped.

Marius’s expression was startled now, no less adorable but significantly less happy. “’Ponine, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by--”

“No!” Courfeyrac pointed an imperious finger at Marius. Jesus, did this guy just live in his own self-directed play? “When women, or anyone, tell us we are making them uncomfortable, it _does not matter_ if we ‘didn’t mean to.’ We apologize and then we stop. Let that be your fourth lesson on how not to be a misogynist douchenozzle.”

“Fourth?” asked Éponine. The best way to bypass awkward moments like that, she had learned, was pretending they weren’t awkward.

“He is an impressionable wee freshling and I am teaching him the ways of WGSS,” he said gravely, using the school’s acronym for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Then he leaned forward, conspiratory but keeping a safe distance, and stage-whispered, “maybe he’ll major in it. He thought Linguistics meant, ‘learn all the languages you want.’”

It annoyed her to have this boy who didn’t know Marius as well as she did tell her things she already knew. It reminded her unpleasantly of having to pretend to be a silly girl to charm adults. But she knew how much people, especially men and especially men older than her, hated to be told ‘ _I know,’_ so instead she demonstrated her own knowledge. “I guess R kept calling him Duckling, right? Does he have a nickname for you?” 

“Hey, I come up with nicknames as often as R does,” Courfeyrac bragged, not sounding at all like a younger girl was trying to upstage him, which meant she hadn’t succeeded yet. “And what he calls me usually depends on what he's calling Enjolras that week. Right now he’s going with Flower-face.” 

She snickered in spite of herself. 

Courfeyrac looked delighted by the snicker. Instead of making a fuss about it, he clapped his hands. “Alright! Solo coaching!” 

Éponine curled on the couch in Marius’s common room, which was big and comfortable. Her own suite used two inflatable mattresses on top of each other. She dreaded the day they popped and her suitemates asked her to contribute to a couch she wouldn’t be able to afford and wouldn’t have time to use anyway. 

“Now, remember,” Courfeyrac told Marius. “When we’re all going ‘dum din dum,’ you arrive on fortissimo, and then you _pull the fuck back.”_ He drew his full body back to emphasize his point, beckoning with his hand. To Éponine, he may as well have been talking in code.

She tried to look up an assignment on her phone, but found herself watching them instead.

Courfeyrac moved his arms too much, cheered whenever Marius succeeded at something, and used ridiculous metaphors like, “there’s a beam of light through your forehead, right? You need to bring the beam forward.” He brought his hand from his head to his nose, where he stretched his fingers meaningfully.

“Your nose needs to be a beam of light,” Éponine supplied.

Courfeyrac pointed at her. “Exactly!”

Marius listened intently, apologized when he fumbled, and lit up when he made Courfeyrac cheer. He seemed confused by the metaphors, but did seem to understand the code.

“Alright, Ducky, I love you, but I have a paper due in two days and I need to pick a topic. I’m thinking, ‘Why Half-Assing Rights is Bullshit.’” He punctuated the title with hand gestures, as if throwing the words into the air. “Give me full rights or give me death, right?”

“You’re starting a paper only two days in advance?” Marius asked, horrified.

“I love freshlings.” Courfeyrac put an arm on his shoulder. “My advice, Ducky? College is the first time in your life you don’t have to worry about getting into college. Put the book down once in a while. Get laid.”

Marius had a ridiculous blush, a stripe of pink running across his cheeks to the tips of his ears, making his freckles even brighter. It was precious. “Oh, I’m not, I don’t,” he stammered.

Courfeyrac chuckled and patted his shoulder before dropping his arm and grinning at Éponine. “Hope we didn’t bore you too much.”

She shrugged and glanced casually at her phone, pretending she had spent most of the lesson on it, instead of watching Marius. Gavroche hadn’t sent any other messages. “No problem. What are you even rehearsing for?”

“Oh, we’re doing like a gig a week until Parent’s Weekend. You’re coming tonight, right?”

“Coming to…?” 

“I forgot to share the Facebook event!” blurted Marius, looking far too embarassed. Maybe he was still blushing about Courfeyrac using the term _laid._

Éponine started to imagine how he would react to Gavroche’s filthy tongue, but the mental image of Marius’s pink ears wasn’t worth the faint nausea that came from picturing Gavroche. “Still haven’t told me what this event is.”

“They opened a fair-trade café and we’re performing there. Getting customers and whatnot.”

“Do I have to buy anything?” Éponine couldn’t imagine beginning to afford fair-trade when she couldn’t even afford regular.

“Nah. Just come look pr--provide moral support!”

Éponine smiled in spite of herself, watching this boy, who was clearly a natural flirt, attempt to be respectful. She didn’t mind comments on her appearance, when they didn’t come with unwanted touches. Her skin might be wrinkled from too much time outdoors, and her shirts might keep falling to reveal too much of her flat chest, but she also knew she was naturally pretty. It was convenient.

After Courfeyrac left, Éponine asked Marius, “want to study together?” 

“Sure.” He faltered. “Do you want to talk about--”

“No.”

Marius, bless him, didn't push. They took his laptop and her problem sets to the courtyard. Éponine checked her phone several times. There was no word from her family, but she did receive a notification from Facebook: Marius, while sitting on the lawn next to her, had invited her to the concert. She grinned over at him and clicked Join.

 


	3. light up when you call my name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning I should really have placed earlier: in earlier chapters, the fic makes light of Joly's hypochondria, mostly because R and Éponine aren't really bastions of sensitivity. I try to depict mental illness with more gravity later in the fic.

_Never know how much I love you_  
_Never know how much I care_  
_When you put your arms around me_  
_You give me fever that's so hard to bear_

 _\-- "Fever,"_ Peggy Lee version

 

 **September part 3**  

It turned out, a capella groups did not just stand around singing, “doo doo doo.” They also sang, “weh deh” and “jun-a-na-jun” and “o-O-oh.” At one point, she was pretty sure the lower-voiced ones were just booming the word “door” at a steady rhythm.

They also sounded fantastic, even if the more delicate-voiced soloists were sometimes drowned out by the half-circle of singers behind them.

Éponine had expected the group to sing in the café, to maximize the number of people guilted into buying overpriced baked goods and fancy tea. Instead, the group stood in front of the café while the audience gathered on the sidewalk.

Leader-boy, who Éponine now knew was named Enjolras but privately thought of as Flower-face, stood at the far left. Grantaire stood at his side. Before each song, Enjolras whispered to him and he whispered something back. After whispering, Enjolras sang a quick cascade of notes that Éponine quickly gathered were the starting notes for each vocal part, and then conducted the song with his hands. Marius’s eyes tracked the movements obsessively. Marius looked cold and stiff, but she knew that was just him being nervous. Still, she wished he would look at her.

Some of their songs were obviously espousing causes. Some of them...might still have been, but weren’t as obvious. She was especially skeptical of how “Fever” tied into social justice, though Courfeyrac pulled off the solo with smoky flair. He slinked through the audience, managing to flirt with everyone individually without making contact or pausing the song. He smiled at Éponine, but spared her the flirty act.

And then he got to the line about Pocahontas and, yep, they had turned “Fever” into a song about the genocide against Native Americans. She was a little impressed.

After the final croon of, _“what a lovely way to burn,”_ he clapped his hands and declared,  “thank you all so much for coming! We’re the ABC, and we still have _half our set left,_ but we’re going to go eat some _delicious_ fair-trade goodies, and you should, too! But first, let us introduce ourself. I’m Courfeyrac, I’m a junior and WGSS major, and I’m our social chair. Feel free to sit on me.” He gave a wink that somehow managed to seem directed at every member of the audience simultaneously before he leapt back into his space in the circle and gestured grandly at Enjolras.

“I’m Enjolras, I’m a junior American Studies major, and I’m the musical conductor.”

“Hi, I’m Bahorel and I’m a law student,” greeted Grantaire. "One day I'll be a lawyer!"

“Not cool, man!” protested a member who had to be Bahorel. He was Native American of some kind, Éponine guessed. He had hacked the sleeves off his ABC shirt, revealing strong muscles. His hair was long, straight, and much shinier than Éponine’s would ever be, and his eye make-up had been applied with significantly more skill than Jehan’s.

“Wait your turn,” Grantaire chided.

“My name is Combeferre. I am a junior cognitive science major, and I am the business manager.” The touch of excessive formality made Éponine smile a little.

“Um, hi. Jehan. I might be an environmental studies major? Or astronomy? Oh, and I’m a sophomore.”

“He also takes all our pictures and arranges like thirty songs a year, because he’s badass.” Grantaire reached across Combeferre to slap Jehan on the shoulder. Since Combeferre’s head ended below both their elbows, it didn’t take much effort. Jehan smiled at the ground

“I’m Feuilly. I’m a sophomore, so I’m not sure of my major,” said a Middle Eastern boy whose jeans and shoes both looked very cheap, though immaculately cared for.

“He’s doubling in architecture and something...Middle Easterny or Migrationy,” Bahorel supplied, “because he is also badass.”

“Badass and crazy,” agreed Grantaire. “And he forgot the part where he’s the assistant business manager.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be accepted to architecture,” he corrected.

Éponine wasn't surprised when Enjolras spoke, but she was surprised that it wasn't to express irritation with Grantaire's constant interjections. Instead he told Feuilly, in a tone that was less reassuring and more reverential, “of course you will.”

Courfeyrac came next. “Aww, did you forget me already?” He winked at the audience again before smiling encouragingly at Marius.

“My name is Marius Pontmercy.” Marius stared at the floor. “I’m a freshman.” He looked helplessly at Bahorel, who was to his right.

“I’m Grantaire.” said Bahorel, narrowing his eyes at the actual Grantaire. “I don’t even know what I’m majoring in this week, even though I’m a junior. I’m the assistant ‘musical conductor,’” he punctuated the title with finger quotes, “but we call me the ass pitch because we’re all five. My hobbies include acting like an ass, getting drunk off my ass, gawking at Enjolr-ass, and waving around a foam sword while Bahorel kicks my ass.”

Bald Eagle laughed. Joly looked worriedly at Grantaire, who looked unbothered. Combeferre put his head in his hands, where Éponine could already tell it spent a lot of time.

“I'm Lesgles de Meux, but my friends call me Bossuet, mostly,” said Bald Eagle. “I’m a senior, kind of, and I’m majoring in, well, it’s complicated. Thank you all for coming!”

Joly, who had spent the performance bouncing up and down with a radiant grin, and was now leaning half on his cane and half on Bossuet, giggled and rubbed Bossuet’s balding head. He turned his radiant grin to the audience and chirped, “Joly, sophomore, MCDB major! Everybody eat!”

The group somehow managed to coax most of the audience into the café. Éponine retracted her thought about starting indoors. This was sneakier. People could come without expecting to pay. Her parents would have approved.

The café was softly lit, the colors all reds and browns, the pillows plentiful. A place designed to make people feel comfortable so they would linger and buy more. The pictures of tortured Iraqis on the wall ruined the effect a bit. In one of his mid-concert speeches, Courfeyrac had explained that the café also hosted human-rights-related photography exhibits.

Éponine hovered near the group as they stood in line. She looked at an image of a skinny man with a bag over his head being dragged on a leash, and hoped Marius would notice her.

From the line, Grantaire was saying, “still say you should sing the original dude version, you are missing _so many_ opportunities for innuendo.”

“You’re missing the point,” Courfeyrac replied, shaking his head.

 _“Sure_ I am. Also, how come you get to make googly eyes at everyone in the audience, but when I get up close and personal you yell at me?”

“You _got drunk_ and _grabbed an audience member by the waist.”_

“That Cabuc dude yanked a girl onstage and kissed her!”

Enjolras, who was paying for a pot of tea, turned to Grantaire and snapped, “we are not following the examples of singers who sexually harass their audience.”

“Okay,” Grantaire said, and stopped debating.

“Why is he paying for that?” Éponine asked no one in particular, but in Marius’s general direction. “Doesn’t singing get you free tea?”

Combeferre, who had been in front of Enjolras in line and now waited beside him, turned and gave her a look of combined gratitude and resignation. “No one here is thinking of profit.”

“I’m here to bring them business, not take their rooibos for free,” Enjolras declared, and moved to the table. Éponine looked at the board. There were about thirty types of tea. No prices were listed, which meant they had to be astronomical.

The group took up two tables. None of them seemed to mind Éponine following, so she took a seat between Marius and Combeferre. Marius’s little smile when she sat down warmed her more than three pots of expensive tea.

Joly waved a cane in Courfeyrac’s direction. “Come Pajama Jam, that song is mine!” He and Bossuet smiled at each other in unison.

“Right, and I’ll be dueting with whoever pairs with Bossuet?” asked Courfeyrac.

“Pajama jam?” asked Éponine. No one heard her.

“Why you gotta wait until Pajama Jam?” asked Bahorel, whose plate was piled with far more cake than one performance could possibly have paid for.

Joly looked wounded. “I’m not going to solo _by myself.”_ Again, they smiled in unison. Technically, Bossuet _had_ soloed, on a song about dead soldiers and their wives, but Joly had come forward to sing all the harmonies.

“They’re so sweet,” Marius murmured to Courfeyrac, who was on his other side.

Éponine opened her mouth to ask about Pajama Jam again. Before she said a word, Combeferre explained, “it is a concert we perform at the end of the year.” She stared at him, amazed to have her question answered before she had to repeat it. He met her gaze calmly. Behind his rectangular glasses, his eyes were huge, dark-lashed, and placid; they struck her with the bone-deep sense of being _seen._

“Most of the group is inebriated and in sleeping wear, though that isn’t universal,” Combeferre continued. “The group we based it on has their songs sung by people of different genders than the norm, but that isn’t exactly useful in this group.” He smiled slightly, or maybe it just seemed slight because his mouth was tiny. He reminded her of a china doll, or maybe a doll from the It’s-a-Small-World ride that her dad had taken her to once. “So we pair off, and assign our partner to sing songs on our behalf.”

Bossuet yelped. Éponine stared at him. The rest of the group looked as if they were already used to this, even Marius, who had been with them for a week.

“Burned your tongue?” asked Joly.

Bossuet nodded, not looking upset. “This is why I put your solo before the food break,” Grantaire told him.

“You decided who sang when?” asked Éponine.

“I make the setlists,” he said proudly.

“Yeah, speaking of which, do you always send ’em out a night in advance?” asked Bahorel.

“A night is an improvement!” objected Joly. It sounded like a genuine defense, too.

“Hey, it’s not my fault no one else tried for ass pitch.” Grantaire shrugged. “’sides, it’s not like I’m useful. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup make the choices and everyone makes it happen. I’m just here to bug Blossom.” He smiled at Enjolras, who frowned back.

“That isn’t how it works. Everyone has their part.”

Éponine considered. Bubbles applied best to Joly, but it was clear who the three in charge were, and of them, it was clear that Courfeyrac was the only cheerful one. “Does that make you Buttercup?” she asked Combeferre.

He scrunched his nose in a manner that was, frankly, adorable. “I would rather not be.”

“Dude, I would make a great Buttercup!” Bahorel declared. “I love punching shit!”

“You realize R is going to call you that forever,” Feuilly said.

Bahorel fondly messed up Grantaire’s hair, as if it could be messed up further. “My man here can call me whatever he wants, as long as he don’t call me no stinkin’ lawyer.”

“They really mean ‘stinking,’” Grantaire told Éponine gravely. “They cover their nose when other law students pass by. I would retaliate to your vicious attack on my hair,” he informed Bahorel, still grave, “but yours at its worst would still look better than mine on a good day, and that would embarrass me.”

“Your hair is fine,” Enjolras snapped.

Grantaire smirked. _“You’re_ one to talk. You know he just rolls out of bed like that?” he asked Bahorel, whose hand was still in his hair. “You’ll find out on tour.”

“It’s against the laws of nature,” Courfeyrac lamented. “No one should have perfect hair first thing in the morning.”

Marius touched his own hair with visible distress, observed Éponine fondly.

“Going bald is convenient sometimes,” said Bossuet.

Grantaire patted him on the arm. “Always glass half full with you. Course, it’s probably half full of something you’re allergic to.”

“Do you have new allergies?” Joly asked Bossuet, alarmed.

“It’s a metaphor, Santa.”

“Are they always like this?” Éponine asked Marius, who was still touching his hair.

He gave her a look of mixed wonder and despair. “I think so.”

\--

 **Text from Éponine, Sunday morning:** _I’m spending all day in the library, so if you want to get songs stuck in my head to annoy the entire library, now’s your chance._  
**Text from Éponine, Sunday afternoon:** _Gav?_  
**Text from Éponine, Sunday evening:** _There is no way you don’t have wifi yet; you NEVER GO THIS LONG without finding wifi._  
**Text from Éponine, Sunday night:** _Come on, Gav.  
_ **Saved to Éponine's drafts, Sunday night:** _At least let me know you’ve still got fingers._

\--

She didn’t go to Marius for another hug, but she walked around campus at two in the morning, rubbing her arms. The stickiness of the summer was fading into autumn chill, and her hands were so numb she could barely feel her arms under them. It made it easier to pretend Marius was holding her instead.

\--

On Monday, she took her place beside Jehan again. “Thank you for coming to the concert,” he greeted, offering a shy smile. She tried to smile back, because it took a monster not to smile at Jehan, but her heart wasn’t in it.

She checked her phone every two minutes, in spite of the dismayed little looks Marius tossed her. Thirty-two minutes into class, she received a message.

 **From Gavroche:** _crashing at monty pythons place  
_ **From Gavroche:** _hes not home but I figure he’ll let me stay yeah?_

The tension rushed from her body so abruptly that she shuddered.

It wasn’t that she trusted Montparnasse, exactly. He was a “family friend,” which in their family was a euphemism for “business associate,” which in their business was yet another euphemism. Gavroche dismissed him as all style, but with Gavroche’s quick brain and quicker feet, he could dismiss most people. Éponine had witnessed Montparnasse's ruthlessness firsthand, but under the circumstances, he was a best-case scenario.

 **From Éponine:** _STAY IN SCHOOL._  
**From Gavroche:** _why do i even talk to u  
_ **From Gavroche:** _nerd_

She grinned at her phone like an idiot until Marius made a distressed noise. Then she tucked her phone back into her bag and grinned at the teacher until class ended.

As they packed for lunch, Jehan caught her eyes and smiled at her, seeming happy for no reason other than noticing her happiness. Éponine would never understand people like that, but this time, her returning smile was real.

\--

Physics had the bad luck of being 11:30 AM - 12:50 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, meaning that seventy percent of the class spent the lecture waiting for lunch, and the other thirty percent arrived with lunch in their hands. Éponine was the latter category, using her lunch swipe at the convenience store before class. She was eating soba noodles in peanut sauce and preparing her notes when a familiar voice asked, “mind if we sit here?”

“Knock yourself out,” she said without lifting her head.

“Oh, don’t say that,” Grantaire teased, “or Bald Eagle here just might.”

She glanced up. Grantaire had Joly and Bossuet with him. In spite of Grantaire having been the one to ask her, Éponine ended up next to Bossuet, with Joly to his right and Grantaire on Joly’s other side. She may as well have been sitting next to Grantaire, though, since he made no attempt to lower his voice as he cracked jokes and loudly muttered things like, _“but what about friction?”_ and _“yeah, sure, if we just pretend inertia doesn’t exist.”_ As a future engineer, Éponine agreed.

When class ended, Joly shrieked, “lunch at last! My blood sugar levels were dropping so fast!”

“Careful, Santa, you just pulled a Jehan,” Grantaire said in a tone of great foreboding.

“Jehan’s rhymes are more sophisticated,” Bossuet corrected.

Grantaire patted Joly’s legs. “Baby steps. Hey Angry Girl, you coming?”

Joly and Bossuet both blinked at Éponine. “She doesn’t seem angry,” said Bossuet, which wasn’t saying much; he and Joly seemed to exist in a constant glow of shared smiles, low blood sugar and all.

“Already ate.” She gestured at the plastic container, now empty save a few traces of peanut sauce and a sliver of scallion.

“Eat with us on Thursday?” Bossuet asked.

“Dining hall food is healthier,” added Joly.

“Unless you’re one of those sad, sad creatures who have a one o'clock class after this,” Grantaire chimed in. They smoothly picked up where the others had left off, with the ease of people used to operating as a unit.

She addressed Grantaire. “Trying to get out of third-wheeling?”

“Third-wheeling for these two is my third favorite thing to do. If I were prettier, they’d probably just make it a threesome.”

“I’ve thought about it?” Joly offered.

“I haven’t,” Bossuet said.

Éponine pictured the logistics of a threesome where two people were in love with each other and one of them was probably visualizing someone else. She then promptly banished that image, because she did not want to imagine any of them having sex. Especially Grantaire, who was not, in fact, pretty. “How about this, we _never talk about_ your sex lives again, and I have lunch with you on Thursday.”

“I dunno,” Grantaire replied, “there’s a lot to talk about. I really get around.”

“He hasn’t done anything with anyone in all of college,” Bossuet informed Éponine.

“He hasn’t even kissed Courfeyrac _everyone’s kissed Courfeyrac_ well we haven’t kissed Courfeyrac but he doesn’t usually kiss people who are taken.”

The image of Courfeyrac with his lips on Marius’s flashed through her mind. Suddenly, imagining an ugly person without his clothes on didn’t seem so bad.

\--

On Wednesday, Éponine had difficulty looking Marius in the eyes.

He didn’t seem to notice.

\--

 **From Gavroche:** _im in class I HOPE UR HAPPY_  
**From Gavroche:** _theyre teaching us about liberty and equality and how murrica is the land of opportunity_  
**From Éponine:** _If America says it’s so, it’s so_  
**From Gavroche:** _they weren’t kidding about all the weed on college campuses huh_  
**From Éponine:** _It’s a song, you wannabe pothead._  
**From Éponine:** _...you got a song stuck in my head WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO.  
_**From Gavroche:** _mua ha ha_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire is referencing the original version of Fever, sung by Little Willie John, which is a lot more blatantly about sex than Peggy Lee's cover, which is the version the ABC adapted.
> 
> The song Bossuet sings and Joly harmonizes on (which is also the song Éponine quotes at Gavroche) is 16 Military Wives. This idea shamelessly stolen from watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_YL5YvBUoI&spfreload=10 too many times (this guy has also become my fancast for this fic's Bossuet, though Bossuet is probably chubbier and balder, because genetics were not kind to him. Elentari7, who continues to loyally beta and cheerlead from a different continent than usual, observes that most of my fancasts are "this guy, but less pretty." To which I say, IT'S NOT MY FAULT SINGERS ARE SO ATTRACTIVE.)
> 
> Sorry not much happens in this chapter! It's mostly here to lay the foundations for things to happen later.


	4. never been aware

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if this counts as a warning, but Grantaire makes some typical-Grantaire-levels-of-cynicism comments that may be perceived as insulting to some religions.

_I've just seen a face,_  
_I can't forget the time or place where we just met._  
_She's just the girl for me,_  
_and I want all the world to see we've met._  
_Had it been another day,_  
_I might have looked the other way_  
_and I'd have never been aware,  
_ _but as it is I'll dream of her tonight._

 _\-- "I've Just Seen a Face,"_ The Beatles

 

**October**

She sat with Grantaire, Joly, and Bossuet again on Thursday. Grantaire eyed her thorough, carefully organized notes and observed, “you take notes like a freshbaby.”

“I am a...fresh...person.” She glanced at Grantaire’s notes, which were a barely legible jumble of scribbles and side notes and names of famous dead people who did not, as far as she knew, have anything to do with physics.

“Courfeyrac says the gender-neutral term is frosh,” Bossuet volunteered.

Joly looked at Éponine with eyes even wider than usual. “You’re so young for this class!”

She enjoyed his admiration. “I’m trying to knock my prereqs out of the way. Regular intro physics would have been two semesters.”

“Hard worker.” Grantaire shook his head. “We've got a regular Feuilly up in here.” They all dropped references to their friends in conversation, as did Jehan and Marius. Éponine had gathered that Combeferre had studied Spanish and Hieroglyphs, that three of the five languages Jehan knew were dead languages (the other two were English and Japanese), and that Bahorel spent money recklessly. So far, they hadn’t said anything about Marius.

After class, Bossuet asked, “you’re eating with us, right?”

“Please?” Joly added.

“You promised,” Grantaire pointed out.

She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been so eager to have her around.

As they walked to a dining hall the three of them had apparently decided beforehand, Grantaire asked, “so, engineering or pre-med?”

“Mechanical engineering,” she replied proudly. “You’re premed?” she guessed, of Joly.

When he nodded his head, in rapid little spurts that looked more like vibrations than nods, he reminded Éponine of a bobblehead. “I’m also trying to rush a req, it’s not as cool though, I’m a sophomore.”

“I just had to take a QR credit that wasn’t math,” said Grantaire. “And Bald Eagle here didn’t get into a single seminar he tried for, except one which doesn’t even count.”

“I preregistered, ’cause I needed it for my major,” Bossuet clarified. “Then it was canceled."

“Intensive physics does not sound like the easiest answer to either of those problems.”

“But it’s the answer that had Joly,” Grantaire explained. He slapped Joly on the shoulder, because apparently boys all expressed affection by attacking each other’s shoulders.

Joly squeaked. “Careful! I’m delicate!”

Bossuet rubbed his shoulder sympathetically, and Joly melded against him with a smile. As Joly used Bossuet’s body to substitute his cane, Grantaire and Éponine deliberately fell a few paces behind. “You really don’t feel like a third wheel?” she asked softly.

“Nah, it’s not like that. Sure, they’re gonna make all my teeth fall out, but we’re all family. Couch manages to live with the chief and his right hand without feeling like a third wheel.”

Aliases were normal in her family’s line of work, so it only took a moment to make the leap of Couch to Social Chair to Courfeyrac. The next two nicknames were arguably even easier, but they made her pause. “Wait, they’re dating?” She had seen them together on campus several times: it was hard to miss the tall blonde man with the perfect face and the china doll with huge eyes. Jehan’s facebook was full of pictures of the ABC, and though she had only looked at the ones with Marius, Enjolras and Combeferre were often side-by-side in those as well.

The idea of Combeferre dating Enjolras bothered her more than it had any right to. She barely even knew these people.

Grantaire laughed so hard he had to stop walking. Joly and Bossuet paused their strange three-legged ambling to turn around.

“Enjolras--dating--someone,” Grantaire choked out. “That’s _amazing._ Tell me another.”

“It isn’t that funny,” Éponine objected. Her irritation at being laughed at was tempered by inexplicable relief.

“Believe me,” Grantaire wiped his eyes. “You have no idea how funny it is.”

\--

Éponine had eaten some excellent meals in her life. Back when business was good and she and Azelma were still her parents’ little darlings (really, Azelma had been her mother’s darling and Éponine had been her father's, but they didn’t talk about that now), her parents took them out to grand meals that she no longer remembered the taste of but could still picture -- tiny steaks that melted in her mouth, elaborate arrangements of sugared fruit cut to look like flowers, piles of raw fish, sweet pad thai with curry that made Azelma cry.

In the last decade or so, she became more used to stale bread and unrecognizable brown paste that her dad called meat. She munched pickles and dreamed of burgers dripping with onions and tomatoes, gnawed chicken feet and fantasized about ripping all the meat from a rib. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night convinced she smelled orange chicken from a Chinese restaurant. Gavroche had stolen her a chocolate cupcake for her birthday two years ago, and she had nearly ruined the gorgeous ganache with her tears.

Dining hall buffets amazed her. The lunchtime salad bar at the dining hall they went to had _three types of lettuce._ What did they even need that much lettuce for? As she piled a chicken quesadilla with black olives and salsa, she tried to remember why she ever ate meals anywhere besides the dining halls. The convenience store had sandwiches and noodles and sometimes flatbread or chicken wings if she got there at the right time, but the dining halls had _seconds._

Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire had chosen a seat with another member of the ABC, the Middle Eastern one with the cheap pants. He greeted her with a warm smile. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve met you, but--”

“Éponine, freshman, mechanical engineering. Did I answer all your questions?” She sat and took a mouthful of quesadilla, which mostly ended up a scoop of salsa.

He chuckled. “Yes, I think that covers it.”

“Feuilly here wants to major in making the universe a better place,” Grantaire explained, “not that anyone’s going to let him, because he keeps picking people who he’s not allowed to help. Dude can turn anything, and I do mean _anything,_ into a conversation about Palestinians. Though sometimes he makes it about the Rohingya, just to shake things up.”

Éponine didn’t know who the Rohingya were, but she didn’t want to make herself look stupid by asking. Luckily, Feuilly was a nice person, and he explained without being asked. Or maybe he wasn’t a nice person, because the explanation made her want to throw up.

“But what can you _do_ about it?” asked Grantaire. “A UN representative went over and tried to talk about the Rohingya, and a Buddhist monk called her a whore, and the crowd _cheered him on._  Meanwhile, we all think Buddhism is nothing but peace and smiles, because we love romanticizing things that are only violent to people we don't like--”

“Jehan’s Buddhist,” Feuilly pointed out.

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying there aren’t Buddhists full of peace and smiles, I’m saying this issue is so off the map that no one with an actual say is even treating it like an issue. Like, even human rights groups in Burma--or is it Myanmar this month? not that it matters since one’s imperialist and one’s military and both are basically the same word--but anyway, even the groups specifically fighting for minority rights say Rohingya don’t count, because they aren’t citizens. They won't even say the word Rohingya; they go with Bengali. That’s the way the world works: the more your life sucks, the more people treat you like you deserve a sucky life.”

“Why do you even know these things?” Éponine asked.

“Grantaire knows most things,” said Joly, nibbling on a gluten-free muffin.

“If Enjolras were here, he’d say Feuilly teaches himself so he knows the history of the things he wants to change, and Grantaire has tremendous knowledge that he just uses to fuel his own cynicism.”

Grantaire gave Bossuet a faux-wounded look. “Why do you say these things? Have I ever done you wrong?”

“Last time we drank together, you said that looking at me depressed you.”

Grantaire winced. “Ugh, sorry. I’m a complete shit when I’m not good-drunk yet.”

Éponine looked to Joly for explanation. Joly looked delighted to offer it. “R has two stages of drunk!” He held up three fingers and ticked them off. “There’s stage one, drunk-enough-to-be-acting-drunk-but-not-drunk-enough-that-it’s-helping, where he hates everyone and everything.”

“Except Enjolras and you,” Bossuet corrected.

“Except Enjolras and me,” Joly agreed. “There’s stage two, where he usually is, when he’s the most fun person in the whole world!”

Grantaire’s eyebrows said, _this is why you are my best friend._

“Then there’s stage three, where he passes out.”

“That one’s my favorite,” mused Grantaire fondly.

“Sometimes I’m glad drinking is haram,” said Feuilly. “No offense.”

Grantaire waved off the possibility of offense. “You could always do as I do and completely ignore religion. Heck, you weren’t even raised with one.”

“Were you?” Éponine asked.

“Jewish. Ish. My parents were mostly high-holy-days about it. I just don’t give a fuck.”

“And on that charming note,” said Feuilly good-naturedly, “I have to get to work.”

“Already?” asked Éponine.

Grantaire, Joly, and Bossuet exchanged a gleeful look that Éponine couldn’t interpret but Feuilly clearly recognized right away. “Please don’t,” he sighed.

“Too late.” Grantaire leaned back, waved an arm grandiosely, and said in a Mean Girls imitation that would have made Courfeyrac jealous, “how do I even begin to explain Rahim Feuilly?”

“Rahim Feuilly is a refugee.”

“He built his own computer, and fixed ours.”

“I hear that he works two jobs.”

“I hear that he self-taught for eight AP exams.”

“His favorite song is Country Road.”

“That isn’t exactly true,” Feuilly tried to say, but they talked over him.

“One time, Enjolras was giving a speech--”

“--and he told him he was inspiring.”

“One time, he told me he couldn’t rest until every human being had a country. It was awesome.”

“I swear those three must rehearse,” Feuilly told Éponine, “but it’s different every time.”

Éponine just barely heard him. She was looking at her hand, which had gone white around her fork.

When Mean Girls came out, Éponine and her dad had watched every Lindsay Lohan movie together. Usually he booked the fancy theatre seats, big plush couches where she could cuddle against him. Mean Girls, though, came out just as things started to go sour. He promised and promised they would see it together, and later he promised and promised to buy it for her. In high school, she streamed it free online, and had to stop watching partway through.

“Are you alright?” asked Feuilly, his voice soft, concerned, and much closer than she remembered it being. She blinked and saw that he had circled to her side of the table. All four boys were watching her in concern.

She shook herself. “I’m fine. I should head out, though. Lots of work to do.”

“We’re singing at a human trafficking awareness raiser on Saturday, if you want to come,” Bossuet told her.

“Yes!” Joly shouted. “Yes, you should come, because--”

Feuilly gave him a look, and Joly clamped a hand over his own mouth. “Smooth,” Grantaire observed.

“Oh, now you have to tell me.” The lonely memory of watching pretty white girls be jerks to each other melted into warm anticipation as she asked, “does someone _like_ me?”

“We all like you,” said Bossuet, gesturing to the group of them.

“She can tell you’re avoiding the question,” Grantaire stage-whispered.

“Be quiet, R,” he stage-whispered back.

Feuilly smiled at his friends before announcing, “okay, I really do have to go.” He snagged Éponine’s cup and plate, taking them to the dish return area for her. For a moment, she was concerned that the unexpected kindness, combined with the effusive introduction, might mean _he_ was the one with a crush on her, but he seemed too unembarrassed. Also, he hadn’t known her name.

She went through the boys. Courfeyrac was clearly the type to flirt with everyone and fall hard for no one. Jehan was sweet, but absorbed in his own world even when they were side by side. Joly and Bossuet were absorbed with each other, Grantaire in Enjolras. Marius--

Éponine smiled.

“Weren’t you leaving?”

“Don’t _ask_ her that, that’ll make her leave.”

She turned her smile to them, flooded with sudden affection for these absurd boys. “I can stay a little longer.”

\--

 **From Gavroche:** _monty python thinks hes so ninja_  
**From Gavroche:** _he finally comes back today and i ask him what he’s been up to and what does he say?_  
**From Gavroche: "** _THINGS"  
_**From Gavroche:** _like dude i know u break the law who doesn’t_

\--

The event was better-attended than Éponine expected. Joly and Bossuet confirmed her suspicion that they dueted together for every song. Feuilly and Enjolras delivered an impassioned joint speech on human trafficking. Grantaire showed up already stage-two drunk.

When the concert ended, Marius turned to them all. “Did you see her?”

“What’s wrong?” asked Joly. “You’re out of breath.”

"Gee, can't imagine why anyone would be breathless after an a cappella concert," commented Bahorel, but he was wrong. Marius was breathless in a way Éponine had never seen him before.

"She was _beautiful,"_ Marius whispered.

Éponine was suddenly aware that they were all outdoors, and it was very cold.

"Are you serious?" demanded Enjolras.

Grantaire laughed. "Serious? Clearly he is!" He lifted an arm to Marius, who looked at him with his mouth still open, frozen in a stunned half-smile that Éponine couldn't turn away from. "It's about time! Between the not talking and the not mooning over anyone, he was starting to make me think of you."

 _About time,_ Éponine’s mind echoed.

Marius hadn't stopped smiling. "I need to find out who she is. Ponine!" he turned to Éponine as if he had just noticed her next to him. "Did you see--there was a beautiful girl, she had the loveliest _eyes--"_

"Eyes," said Enjolras slowly, like he thought he was restraining his irritation, "have nothing to do with personality. I’m sure you mean well, but we're here to send a message, not objectify our audience."

"If you had seen her--"

Grantaire laughed again, tugging Enjolras from frowning at Marius to glaring at him. "It's a love song in the making! We should have had an encore performance in this girl's honor. What do you say, give Marius a solo on 'I've Just Seen a Face' at the next gig?"

Marius was also looking at Grantaire now, instead of her. Éponine now felt hot and cold at the same time. For a single, fierce moment she hated Grantaire, so eager to encourage something so _stupid._

"Maybe if you turn a set list in on time,” Enjolras retorted.

"I was distracted by thoughts of your lovely eyes," Grantaire replied. "Marius, tell us more about eyes!" He didn't look away from Enjolras as he said it.

“I’ve seen her before, I think, on campus, but never--”

“Had it been another day, you might have looked the other way?” prompted Grantaire, earning him yet another look from Enjolras.

“I couldn’t possibly have looked away from the way her face was, oh, it was just _glowing._ You could see how deeply she cared.”

 _What do you know about caring,_ thought Éponine, less angry than sad. _What do you see in girls’ faces._

“--and she had such a _kind smile.”_

Éponine's nails bit into her hands as she watched him turn from Grantaire to Enjolras, not looking at her again for the rest of the night.

She tried to glare at Grantaire instead, as Enjolras was, but now all she could see was his stare fixed on Enjolras and his mocking words designed to turn that incredulous, frustrated face from Marius to himself. Marius couldn't keep the stupid smile off his face, while Grantaire only smiled when Enjolras was looking.

No, she realized, fingers loosening. She didn't hate any of them. She couldn’t.

The night air felt cold again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QR = quantitative reasoning
> 
> The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in Myanmar/Burma who are denied citizenship and basic human rights, and subject to frequent violence that is ignored by the government and actively promoted by Buddhist groups in the region. They're considered one of the most persecuted groups in the world, so it seemed like an issue Feuilly would be passionate about.


	5. bring you back your thirst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Tequila_Mockingbyrd. She knows why.

_There is too much time drinking whiskey and wine  
The last cup is always like the first  
Step in line, a root mixed with a vine  
_ _It will bring you back your thirst  
_ _Too many days in a hedgerow maze  
_ _Wondering if you've ever been here before_

_Step in line, a root mixed with a vine_  
_An invitation to the court_  
_That keeps me coming back for more_  
_Keeps me knocking at your door_  
_Wondering if I truly saw_  
_The very thing I came here for_

        --  _"Juramidam,"_ Nick Mulvey

 

 **October, part 2**  

On Sunday, they met to go over the week’s Physics problem sets. It was nothing like looking at chemistry problem sets with Marius, which consisted of glancing at their mostly-matching answers, exchanging smiles, and resolving differences without much conversation. This was partially because intensive physics was more confusing than freshman chemistry, and partially because Marius and Éponine never actually explained things to one another. Marius was too self-conscious and Éponine’s brain moved too quickly; she leapt from Step C to Step J while assuming Step A was intuitive.

Meanwhile, Bossuet and Grantaire showed up with blank sheets and the three boys talked until all their answers matched Joly’s.

Grantaire was a master at turning physics concepts into epic poems, full of obscure references and tangential anecdotes, but his answers to questions about math somehow managed not to involve any numbers. Joly was a master at turning simple problems into full-blown science lessons, excitedly scribbling equations and explaining who discovered them. Bossuet was a master at translating Grantaire and Joly into something that sounded like English.

Bossuet was her favorite, really.

\--

Marius and Jehan spent lunch on Monday sincerely trying to pick a song Jehan could arrange for Marius to sing in honor of the girl _whose name he didn’t even know._ They were debating between “I Won’t Give Up” and “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” when Éponine, for the first time since she and Marius had started eating together, left lunch early instead of staying by his side for as long as he would let her.

\--

Grantaire wasn’t in physics on Tuesday. Joly turned in his problem set for him.

“Does this happen a lot?” asked Éponine.

Joly gave his bobblehead nod. “It’s why we all give me the psets on Sunday, sometimes I’m sick, but R misses a lot and Bossuet keeps losing them, it’s a lot of responsibility but.” He looked unreasonably frightened by the idea of not being able to turn in his friends’ problem sets.

“So give them to me,” said Éponine. Bossuet and Joly looked at her like she was a godsend.

\--

For the entire walk to the dining hall, Bossuet asked Joly questions about a girl named Musichetta, who apparently read lots of books and had very small hands. Sounded like Combeferre to Éponine. Bossuet was intent and curious, while Joly was strangely twitchy.

Grantaire slouched into lunch when they had already gotten their plates. Dark circles cut into the skin under his bloodshot eyes, his hair was even more rumpled than usual, and he badly needed a shave, but he slipped into the conversation as easily and cheerfully as if he’d been there the entire time.

“Who the hell is Musichetta?” Éponine asked him.

“Oh, didn’t you hear? Marius isn’t the only one who found a girl at the sex trafficking thing.”

“Do you listen to sentences in your head before you speak them out loud?” Bossuet asked Grantaire.

“Not really.”

“And is she also your true love?” she asked Joly, bitterness creeping into her voice. “You know her name and her favorite book, so you have Marius beat.”

“I already have true love,” said Joly stoutly, putting a hand on Bossuet’s arm. Bossuet smiled at the hand but didn’t meet Joly’s eyes. “Musichetta is a girl I had a crush on as a freshman. She’s a lit major, so I haven’t had class with her in ages.”

Éponine caught Feuilly looking at the two of them, but he said nothing.

\--

 **From Gavroche:** _ugh monty python made me go home_  
**From Éponine:** _Are you okay?_  
**From Gavroche:** _yeah i think they just want me here for welfare or some shit_  
**From Éponine:** _That’s not what I mean._  
**From Gavroche:** _eh you know sucks but nice to see a i guess_

Things had to be bad, if he was resorting to such an obvious lie.

Éponine got along well with both her siblings. Éponine and Gavroche were made of the same material; daring and resourceful and charming, inclined to laugh at threats and sing for no reason. She and Azelma, meanwhile, were connected by a lifetime of Éponine charging ahead while Azelma trotted behind. Gavroche and Azelma had nothing in common. She was soft and timid, ill-suited to the role of older sibling.

(They didn't talk about the other part. The part where Azelma loved their parents, and Gavroche barely considered them his.)

\--

“You take a stroll at two in the morning, and who do you run into?”

Éponine knew she shouldn’t be annoyed to run into Grantaire. He had been nothing but nice to her, even if he did show up to his own performances drunk. But Wednesday lunch had been yet more of Marius talking about the mystery girl, and she just wanted _one night_ without thinking about…

Well, she was thinking about him anyway.

Grantaire, the planes of his face looking even more irregular than usual in the streetlights, twisted his mouth into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Want to be alone?” he guessed, already taking a step.

Her irritation faded, and she sighed. “Not really.”

His expression changed into an actual smile. “Want to go on a roof?”

She absolutely wanted to go on a roof. She wanted to learn all the nooks and crannies of campus, and she was well on her way there. She was also aware that Grantaire’s eyes were bloodshot again. “How drunk are you?”

He laughed. “Not drunk enough to be asleep, which is sober enough to get on at least four roofs. Wait, are you seriously barefoot right now?”

“I don’t like shoes.” She certainly didn’t like her shoes, which were falling apart and too big, because her feet hadn’t gotten longer in years, but they had gotten significantly thinner.

“That’s what flip-flops are for.”

Éponine scrunched her nose, which made her think of Combeferre’s adorable little nose-scrunch, which lightened her mood considerably. “They pinch between my toes. Do you really nickname Combeferre and Courfeyrac based on what you’re calling Enjolras?”

“Do you always jump from one idea to another like that?”

She considered. “I don’t notice.” The jumps made sense to _her,_ after all. “More when I’m tired or hungry, I think.”

Grantaire slapped his hands together gleefully. “That’s what we can do! Food.”

“I don’t have my wallet with me.”

“Yeah, that was kind of obvious.” He gestured to her clothes, which consisted of a thin shirt that hung low at the neck and a long, threadbare skirt. Éponine had at one point carried three bags under the skirt, but she supposed Grantaire didn’t have to think about that sort of thing. “Luckily, I am drunk enough to buy about twice as much food as I’m going to eat, so you would be doing the environment a service by eating with me.”

“Well, if it’s for the _environment.”_

“We’re going back to your place first, though.”

“And how is that up to you?”

“I refuse to be held responsible if you step on broken glass.”

She lifted her eyebrows. Lawsuit threats required a significantly higher income bracket than she was at.

“I would hold myself responsible,” said Grantaire stubbornly, which made even less sense than a lawsuit, but he was drunk. And she was hungry.

“If you take this as an invitation to do anything besides walk me to my room and buy me dinner, you should be aware that I’m currently carrying four knives on my person.”

“And _you_ should be aware that I’m kind of madly in love,” he pointed out with a self-deprecating and distinctly unsmiling twist to his mouth.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She expected him to laugh. His mouth hardened into a thin line instead. “Hombre says that we forget what life is like for girls. Hombre’s usually right about things. How about I wait outside?” This worked for her, so they walked towards the freshman dorms, Éponine letting his half-coherent ramble wash over her. “Hombre’s what I call Combeferre when I’m not, y’know, giving the triumvirate themed nicknames,” and seriously, who included the word _triumvirate_ in their drunken rambles? “They make it so easy, though! Right now I’m going with cats. Mufasa, Tomcat, and Combe _fur,_ though maybe _Ferre-_ ball would be better? ’Course that’s just making Tomcat call me Rafiqi, so now I’m thinking of calling Santa and Bald Eagle Timone and Pumba. How have we never sung Disney? You’d think Jehan would _love_ to arrange a Disney song.”

She pictured Marius as Simba. “Why Santa, anyway?”

“Because he’s so _Jolllly._ Tomcat started the nickname thing anyway, because he hates his name so much. Which, like, Tomás de Courfeyrac III is a pretty stuffy name, but he takes it a bit far. He’ll just ask you your name and say, yeah, how would you like it if I called you xyz—actually, is it still ‘the third’ if you’re not white?”

“Are you aware that you’re still talking?”

“Oh, who cares about awareness? It makes everything more complicated. Though, what is man without awareness? What is America without an economic system based on racial exploitation? What is England without Harry Potter? England is probably many things without Harry Potter. You know they decided I was a Hufflepuff? I’m great at finding things, though, I find the best places in every city—oh look!”

They were on the square of campus that held the freshman dorms, and Grantaire had abruptly gotten very enthusiastic about what looked to Éponine like a perfectly normal lamppost.

“I suppose you make sense to yourself.”

“Oh, no, I’m still _way_ too sober for that.” He touched the lamppost with such abrupt, unexpected tenderness that she expected him to start making out with it. Or humping it.

“Right. You two have your moment, I’m going to get my shoes.” She climbed the stairs to her room, looked at her ancient shoes, and seriously considered going to bed and leaving Grantaire to romance the lamppost.

She weighed her bed against company and a free meal. It wasn’t a hard choice.

When she came back down, Grantaire was neither kissing nor molesting the lamppost, but he was running his fingers down it in a way that she was hard-pressed not to describe as stroking. “If you two need to be alone, I could go change shoes again,” Éponine said dryly.

He lowered his hand slowly. “I met him right here, you know.”

“I guessed. Tell me the story while you take me to this Chinese place.”

He laughed. “I like the way you think.” He moved with surprising grace for a drunk person, more bounds than steps. Then again, sober Grantaire was so graceful his legs seemed to flow more than walk. “It was like, a month into freshman year classes, and the funny thing is that he talked to me first. I was stage-one drunk and ranting about all these tragic dead fictional rich white boys who we think of as heroes when they were just jerks, and I had just gotten to Hamlet--who is, by the way, a fucking douchebag who accomplishes _nothing_ besides making an ass of himself and getting everyone killed--”

“Did Enjolras _not agree_ on that?”

“On Hamlet specifically, sure. It was more the ‘that’s what happens when you try to kill people in power. _Everybody dies and Norway takes over’_ bit that he objected to.”

“That does seem like a dramatic conclusion to draw from a story about a guy who graduated college at thirty.”

“I was using _humorous hyperbole_ and _literary examples_ to _illustrate a point.”_

“Were you also emphasizing every other word to prove your point?”

“My emphasis formula is far more sophisticated than that,” he boasted.

“Naturally.”

Grantaire’s Chinese restaurant was a tiny place with too much air conditioning for early October. Éponine peered hungrily at the pictures of food on the wall. Her eyes lingered on the chicken lo mein. She had eaten a large dinner, her work spread out in front of her and her hand switching between pencil and fork, but it had been hours ago at this point.

Grantaire flirted shamelessly at the waitress, who was at least three times his age and not much better-looking than he was. She smacked his hand with her notepad when he complimented her on her fine mustache.

He ordered without looking at the menu--scallion pancakes, pork dumplings, chicken lo mein, beer. “This isn’t the best Chinese restaurant in the area,” he told her, “but it’s the best one open right now. Anyway, lamppost story. He starts talking about how fighting those in power is necessary to create change, and he’s fucking _lit up,_ like his eyes are glowing and his hair is glowing and he looks like an angel, and I mean the flaming sword type angel who’ll fuck your shit up in the name of the Lord.”

The scallion pancakes and two bottles of beer arrived startlingly quickly, and he blew the woman a kiss before promptly shoving the plate in Éponine’s direction. “Help me with these or I’ll be full by the time the dumplings show up. Dip them in the sauce.”

“Don’t tell me how to eat.” The scallion pancakes were crisp and oily. She dipped her second bite in the sauce, which looked like soy sauce but turned out to be something sweet. “If you ask me, everyone in that play had it coming. Except Ophelia, that was just shitty.”

His wandering, bloodshot gaze focused on her for a moment. “Ophelia. That’d be a good nickname for you.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed.

“No, seriously.” She poured herself a glass of beer. “Hamlet was an asshole.”

“But he hadn’t always been.” He wagged a finger and shoved half a slice of scallion pancake into his mouth at once. He somehow managed to chew and swallow it all without any bits getting caught in his stubble. “That’s the whole point. Do you prefer Nophelia? That even kind of sounds like your name.”

She attempted to make a face at him while eating scallion pancake, but it was hard to look displeased while eating scallion pancakes. “And your strategy is, what, pick someone who wasn’t nice to you in the first place?” She tried to imagine Marius looking at her the way she had seen Enjolras look at Grantaire--exasperated, bewildered, a little pitying. But he would only do that if something was wrong, and Éponine would know it. She would try to help him.

She didn’t know if that said good things about Marius, or terrible things about herself.

Éponine finished her glass of beer and poured herself another.

Grantaire ate another slice of pancake. “I don’t believe in strategies.”

“Of course you don’t.”

The lo mein arrived, and Grantaire dumped more than half the contents onto the half-empty scallion plate, including all the vegetables. “I’m just here for the beer, mostly,” he said when he caught Éponine’s incredulous look. “And Santa says carbs and grease help with hangovers, but they also said cigarettes were good for you.”

“Sometimes I’m convinced all of you are my collective hallucinations,” she informed him as he passed her the plate of scallion pancake and lo mein. “Also I’m about to drown this in vinegar, so no take-backs.”

“I used to feel that way about him sometimes. Usually when I hadn’t had a drink in a while.”

“You felt like…no take-backs?”

His laugh was hollow and humorless. “That too.” He took a long swig of beer before clarifying, “I used to think he couldn’t be for real. Like, plenty of people talk big about causes; it lets them feel self-righteous and it’s something to get angry about, and people like being angry, but how many of them ever actually do anything? But Enjolras,” and she could see why he almost never said the name, because he spoke it like a prayer, “he really believes all that stuff, and he’s really willing to give up anything—like, seriously, I’m glad he hasn’t found a problem he can solve with martyrdom, because he _would_ —and he just really, really cares about everyone and everything. I care about like, two ones and things, and half of them addictive.” He took another swig of beer and looked at the bottle contemplatively. “All of them are addictive.”

“Why did you join the ABC?” she blurted. Tongue loose from beer or from her own courage, she pointed out, “you show up to your own performances drunk. Isn’t that just going to make him like you less?”

He frowned, not like she had insulted him but like she missed the point. “The point isn’t how he feels about _me._ And it’s not like...when I signed up for ass pitch, I wasn’t _planning_ to be a fuck-up at it. I thought I could do it. I always think I can do things.” He suddenly seemed very sober.

Éponine pulled her glass closer to herself. She did not want to have this conversation. “What did you audition with?” she asked.

As she had hoped he would, he crooked his familiar half-smile, leaned forward, and started to sing about longing and alcohol, which figured. His voice was low, cracked from the drinking or the smoking or the emotion. it was also gorgeous, rumbling in his throat as if it only slipped from his lips as an afterthought.

When he was done, he leaned back, nearly tipping the chair over. His smile was equal parts self-effacing and arrogant. “Sounds better with a guitar. ’Course, between using a guitar at an a capella audition and singing a song with the line _too much time drinking whiskey and wine,_ Enjolras thought I wasn’t taking them seriously. And apparently it's actually about like, shamanistic practices and God and his soldiers, but for me it's just about...sometimes just  _wanting_ can be its own miracle.  _'Came upon no wine that tastes so good every day as thirst'_ and whatnot."

The dumplings _finally_ arrived, and Éponine, who had long since finished her lo mein and most of his, dumped one into hot sauce. Grantaire looked at the dumplings contemplatively, but didn’t try to eat them. “I thought about singing ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,’ but that seemed creepery. That was before I realized that 1,” he started ticking on his fingers, “half the drunk people he talks to try to hump his leg because he’s a golden Greek god and also people are assholes. 2. He lives with Couch, who I swear to god I saw flirting with a potted plant a couple months ago. 3. He doesn’t take me seriously anyway. One plus two plus three equals I can serenade him with love songs from now until graduation, and he sees it as just another type of antic.”

“You just did the same thing Joly does.”

Grantaire looked at his three still-lifted fingers for a long, bewildered moment before he laughed. “I did! I have to tell him that.” He pulled his phone from his pant pocket and fumbled for an embarrassing length of time with turning it on, rambling cheerfully as he did. “It’s hilarious, we all spend so much time together that we rub off on each other, especially Tomcat rubs off on everyone; Mufasa’s the king and Combefur’s always right, but Tomcat’s kind of the heart of—”

He cut off, eyes frozen on the screen.

“What,” Éponine started to ask, but Grantaire had already hit a button and put the phone to his ear.

His entire body had gone tense, eyes fixed forward, the only motion his fingers frantically drumming the table as he listened to whoever was on the other end. His voice, though, came out an unconcerned drawl. “There’s still a giant bag of M&M’s sitting in my room.” He paused briefly, fingers switching from drumming to gripping the table, then continued drawling, “except the green ones. I picked them out. Hard-working of me, right?” Somehow he managed to put a smile in his voice in spite of the tension in his mouth. “The green M&M’s taste best. Which makes no sense, of course, since they’re all the same, but that’s the thing about human brains. We work on heuristics; you can ask Hombre. Once we’ve decided something, we just interpret new information accordingly.”

He seemed to have forgotten anyone was with him. Éponine stood up, went to the jug of water, and drank two glasses. Between that and eating at least two-thirds of the food, she would hopefully just be tired in the morning, not tired and hungover. She listened as she did--her hearing was keen, and Grantaire was loud.

“When did I call anything stupid?If _you_ think it’s stupid, good for you, but _I’m_ just talking about M &M’s. I drank them with apple juice. I love apple juice. Apples really are the fruit of the gods, you know.”

Éponine did not enjoy being ignored, and she was no longer hungry, so she wrapped two of the remaining dumplings in a napkin and went to the door. Grantaire absently waved at her as he discussed how much better cider was than juice. “You’d think hard cider would just be two things I love at the same time, but honestly, give me fresh-pressed cider and it’s better without the booze. Don’t tell anyone I said that, though, I have a reputation to uphold.”

“What. The. Hell,” Éponine asked the bundle of dumplings in her hand. They, not unexpectedly, didn’t answer.


	6. when the party ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains trigger warnings!

_Better wake up little sleepy head,_  
_The big old world will pass us by,_  
_So many things we could do instead,_  
_Get what you want with your lucky eyes._  
_Faster kill, faster still pussycat._  
_Those hyenas are not your friends,_  
_Honey you know where the world is at,_  
_Come home with me when the party ends._

 _\-- "Faster Kill Pussycat,"_ Paul Oakenfield

 

**October, part 3**

To Éponine’s mild astonishment, Grantaire was not only in Physics on Thursday, but he was also there before her or Joly. “But wasn’t your bike lock on? Did it break again?” he was asking Bossuet as she sat down.

“They cut it off,” Bossuet answered, as if it was the funniest thing that had happened all week. If Bossuet's life were a tv show, she mused, the laugh track when the pie hit him in the face would be his own laughter, instead of an audience.

“Where’s," Éponine began, then paused. "Do I really have to call him Santa?”

“He also replies to Rancher. That’s what Courfeyrac calls him.”

“I’m pretty sure he just assumes that whatever people say in a cheerful voice is meant for him,” said Grantaire, his eyebrows communicating that Courfeyrac was invading his territory by nicknaming Joly. “I called him Jelly Jar once, and he answered.”

“You also called him Jolly Wolly Doodle.”

“That was much less of a stretch than Jelly Jar.”

“That was not actually the major point of the question,” Éponine reminded them.

Bossuet shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since rehearsal. I went to Feuilly’s after rehearsal to practice our solo, so I just slept over there.”

“To practice..." her forehead furrowed. "Your solo with Feuilly?”

Grantaire’s eyebrows communicated something quick and disapproving, but she wasn’t entirely sure what.

Joly showed up halfway through class with dark circles under his eyes and tackled Grantaire in his seat with a hug so tight the Physics professor paused her lecturing to comment. After class, he opened his bag and offered Grantaire an apple wrapped in napkins.

Bossuet gave them both a mildly confused look, cleared his throat, and asked Joly, “so, how is Musichetta doing?”

\--

“So who wants to hit people with foam swords on Saturday?” Grantaire asked, when lunch was over.

_“A-are!” _Joly and Bossuet groaned in unison. Feuilly had already left, but not before taking Joly aside and murmuring something that Joly waved off with a frantic smile.__

“Oh, come on, soon it’ll be the next snowmageddon and we’ll all have to huddle together for warmth instead of beating each other. I’m sure Feuilly’s working, what’s your excuse?”

Bossuet turned to Éponine. He had somehow decided she was the voice of reason, which...made sense, if his other options were Joly and Grantaire. “Last time, I broke a sword and Joly thought he sprained his ankle.”

“In other words, a completely typical Saturday, but with more hitting people with swords. Nophelia wants to hit people with me, right, Nophelia?”

“Oh, do you have a nickname now?” asked Joly eagerly.

“That makes you one of us,” Bossuet informed her.

“And the part where I’m not male and don’t sing is just a technicality?”

“Bahorel’s not male and they’re with us. ’Course they’re not officially registered as a member, but that’s because they’re a law student, not because they’re a they. More importantly, they’re our only bass. And they smack people with me.”

“Bahorel will smack anything,” Bossuet pointed out. “Like that guy who punched a Monet painting.”

“Bahorel will punch a brick wall,” Joly chimed in.

Bossuet smiled at him, though their smiles missed one another by a moment. “Bahorel will punch an electric fence.”

“Bahorel will punch a 1967 Chevy Impala,” supplied Grantaire.

Bossuet snorted. “Thank you for reminding us of your crush on the angel in the trenchcoat, R.”

“He’s so sexy with his sad puppy dog eyes and his wee angel face and his violent stabbing rampages,” he sighed. “But do go on.”

“Bahorel will punch a helicopter.”

“Bahorel will punch the Hoover dam.”

“Really, the Hoover Dam specifically?” asked Éponine. It didn’t surprise her when they just kept talking.

“Bahorel will punch a glacier.”

“Bahorel will punch a sidewalk.”

“Have we not all punched sidewalks in our day, my friend?” asked Grantaire, as if it were a very sage question.

“But would he punch a polar bear, is the question,” said Éponine. They gave her looks of dramatized horror (Grantaire), genuine horror (Joly), and mild admiration (Bossuet.) Bossuet continued to be her favorite.

Grantaire brandished his butter knife like a sword. “You take that back!”

“I am not going to fight you with a butter knife in a dining hall.” She also wasn’t going to hit him with a foam sword, as fun as it sounded. Sometimes, she still had brunch with Marius on Saturdays, though lately he had been having them with Courfeyrac instead. She didn’t mind Jehan joining their post-Chemistry lunches, exactly; he was a sweetheart, and eloquently enthusiastic when he wasn’t being timid. But she craved alone time with Marius.

Grantaire sighed. “You should go sit with the Chief, the Duckling, and Hombre at the table of people who don’t believe in fun.”

“Courf is usually at that table,” Joly pointed out.

“Is this a metaphorical table, or can I actually eat with them? Because I just might,” Éponine threatened.

Grantaire feigned stabbing himself with the butter knife and collapsing onto the table.

\--

After lunch, Éponine snuck behind Joly and Grantaire. “I’m being stupid,” she heard Joly complain in a tiny, aching voice, “I know I’m being stupid. Why am I still being stupid?”

Grantaire wrapped an arm around Joly’s shoulder. “Brains, man. They suck.”

Joly nodded enthusiastically. “Mine sucks so much. It’s not even like--I don’t think I own him. Oh god, am I being possessive? Is this an abusive relationship? Am I being abusive?” His voice struck such a high pitch Éponine flinched.

Or maybe it was the words that made her flinch.

“Jolllly, remember how I said I wasn’t calling you stupid?”

Joly laid a head against Grantaire’s shoulder and admitted, “not really.”

“Good, because I take it back. You are stupid.”

“But what if you just don’t _know?”_ he wailed. “Most abusers have friends who love them, right?”

“Santa-baby, if you’re abusing Bossuet, Courfeyrac will kick your ass into the emergency room, and I will yell at you for a while and then hold your hand while you learn to be a better person. So you’ll be doubly punished.”

From behind, Éponine vaguely made out Joly elbowing Grantaire in the side without removing his head from Grantaire’s shoulder. “Don’t talk shit about my best friend.”

“Oh, come on, you can’t make Couch your best friend! He’s already Eagle and Duckling’s best friend.”

Éponine turned so fast her bag smacked hard against her side. She walked sharply in the opposite direction, not thinking about where she was going.

\--

Jehan noticed Éponine’s glum silence and forced smiles in the face of Marius’s pining before Marius did, which was just typical.

“Could we change the subject?” he asked. “Not that this isn’t interesting,” he assured Marius, “but maybe we could talk about Courfeyrac’s birthday? Which you’re totally invited to, by the way,” he added to Éponine. This seemed more like a decision for Courfeyrac, but she supposed he was the type to throw ragers that half the school was invited to. “It’s going to be cat-themed!” he added, which made her rethink the rager bit.

“Better subject: tell me about the ABC officers,” she decided, because Marius made her want to be polite, and _how often has Courfeyrac’s tongue been in your mouth_ was not a polite question.

Marius adored Courfeyrac, who had apparently gotten him a part-time job as a translator (“he’s the center of the group,” supplied Jehan. “Enjolras is the shining star and Combeferre is the one who really figures out the direction, but Courfeyrac is so _warm.”)_ Éponine hid her hurt that Marius hadn’t mentioned this new job.

They both admired Enjolras, and Marius insisted he was kind. Marius was afraid of Combeferre, and looked deeply hurt when Éponine laughed. And of course, they both hero-worshipped Feuilly, but hadn’t spent much time with him--Marius, in fact, had never seen him outside rehearsal.

Marius seemed to forget that Grantaire was also an officer, but then, Marius also walked around with a backpack that had his name on it and then was confused when strangers knew his name. It was endearing, really.

\--

There wasn’t an ABC concert on Friday night or that weekend, because of Courfeyrac’s birthday. Éponine told herself she wasn’t disappointed.

Gavroche hadn’t texted since returning to their parents’ house. Éponine told herself she wasn’t scared.

\--

Marius couldn’t have brunch with her on Saturday, because he and Enjolras were going shopping for Courfeyrac’s birthday party, which was apparently an honor and not terrifying at all. So she went to the courtyard where the group hit each other with foam swords, because at least they would be happy to see her.

There were a cluster of students, but Grantaire and Bahorel were obviously the best--Bahorel through sheer force, and Grantaire through remarkable grace and footwork (“dude did varsity fencing for like two months when he was a freshman,” Bahorel told her. “I didn’t even know varsity fencing was a thing.”) Éponine managed to get to second place mostly by biding her time, moving fast, and waiting until it was just the three of them before forming an alliance with one and charging the third. She won twice by striking Bahorel from behind. Grantaire was too fast and, she suspected, too suspicious.

“You are a _boss,”_ Bahorel told her when they were the last three left, gathering foam weapons under a large tree.

“You’re coming to the birthday thing tonight, right?” Grantaire asked her. “Jehan told Hombre he invited you. Don’t worry that it’s going to be huge or anything. Couch had his theatre-and-WGSS thing on Friday. Tonight is for the Angry Blonde Crusade.”

“Someday, someone is going to tell me what this group name actually stands for,” Bahorel said in a tone of great foreboding.

“We’re afraid you’ll sue us for damages,” Grantaire told him, “once you’re a lawyer and all.”

Bahorel let out what sounded alarmingly like a war whoop and chased Grantaire around the courtyard with the foam nunchucks. Grantaire tap-danced around the courtyard in sneakers and still outpaced him, because Grantaire was a little shit.

\--

Éponine did not own anything particularly cat-themed, so she tied a black sash into careful knots to create a headband with cat ears. If she looked ridiculous, she could just take it off, but she had already seen enough of the ABC boys (+ Bahorel) that she fully expected someone to be in a leather catsuit (probably Courfeyrac) and someone else to be in footie pajamas covered in cats (maybe multiple someones).

Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Enjolras shared a two-story townhouse. It was only a few minutes from campus, which meant it was astronomically expensive.

The party was, as promised, not a rager. Combeferre answered the door, wearing a simple pair of jeans and a shirt with a giant close-up cat on it. The shirt was a few sizes too big for him, but he wore it with grace. Someone had painted him a kitty-style nose and whiskers with black liquid eyeliner. Somehow he managed to make that, too, look dignified, which made her again wonder whether they were all a collective hallucination.

“I’m glad you made it. I like the ears.” His huge eyes were warm and pleased. She had never understood the appeal of blue eyes, she thought.

“I’m not making out with Courfeyrac,” she warned.

He smiled his small smile at her. “He’ll respect your wishes on that. Would you like something to eat?”

“Do you have warm milk?” she joked.

He smiled a different smile—equally small, equally amused, but fond and a little tired instead of kind and startled. “Of course. Warm regular milk, warm chocolate milk, tuna sandwiches, sausages because I pointed out that fish isn’t actually good for cats. I was more offering catnip, though.”

“Did you just offer me cat drugs?”

He chuckled. “In a manner of speaking.” He gestured for her to enter.

The decorators—Jehan and Feuilly, Jehan had mentioned at lunch on Friday—had really outdone themselves. There were streamers patterned with cats, colorful plastic balloons with cat faces drawn in marker, shiny metallic balloons with happy cartoon cat faces. The food was set out in bowls on the floor, though there was a table covered in alcohol. “Catnip” turned out to be a delightful mix of cocoa puffs and nutella, which Éponine ate in hungry handfuls as she glanced around the room. Joly, who was sitting next to the food, sipping warm milk while wearing a Lion King themed shirt, waved at her enthusiastically.

Courfeyrac was not in fact wearing a leather catsuit. He was instead dressed as the Rum Tum Tugger, complete with elaborate face paint that was starting to wash off from sweat—probably because he was dancing. Bossuet (who was not wearing anything cat-themed, due no doubt to a stroke of bad luck that he would tell her about with a laugh), Grantaire (who was the one in footie pajamas with little cats over it), Bahorel (who put everyone else to shame with the glamor of their sheer tiger-print skirt, black leggings, glittery golden top, giant gold claws, and gold cat earrings), and a pretty possibly-female stranger (who wore pajama pants covered in rainbow-colored paw prints and a cat-shaped beret holding her masses of tiny ringlets) were dancing with him. The four dancers who did not have face-paint had eyeliner noses and whiskers to match Combeferre’s.

The dance occasionally descended into a group grind-fest, but it mostly didn’t, probably because the _The Cat Came Back_ was less than conducive. Still, the ABC members shouted along to the song like they were at a rave, if people at raves had beautiful voices and remarkable harmonizing skills. The girl tried to sing along, but kept laughing too hard.

Feuilly (old jeans and a white t-shirt with a cat beautifully drawn in metallic silver sharpie) was sitting on the floor, gracefully applying eyeliner to Marius’s twitchy cheeks. Marius apparently also didn’t own cat-themed clothing--based on the fit, his boxer shorts covered in tiny smiling Siamese cats belonged to Courfeyrac.

Enjolras sat on one of the two brown leather couches, sometimes watching Marius and Feuilly, sometimes watching the dancing quartet. With his hair flowing freely and his face rubbed with gold shimmer before a slightly fancier eyeliner-makeup-job, he looked a bit like a particularly elegant lion. He greeted Éponine with a slight inclination of his head as Combeferre sat beside him.

Jehan was flitting around like a small bird, taking pictures with a huge camera. He was wearing a shockingly ugly knitted sweater with two felt cats on it and a pair of leggings covered with adorable wee kittens doing distinctly non-kitten-like things like eating sushi with chopsticks and writing in notebooks, both of which she strongly suspected he wore on normal occasions as well.

Éponine quickly determined that Marius was more likely to sit next to Enjolras in the couch area than to join the shout-and-occasionally-grind jam session or to fill himself with nutella, so she poured herself a bowl and walked up to the couch. “Is this the place least likely to descend into dry humping and singing ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’”

Combeferre immediately pulled to make a space for her--between him and the armrest, so he was beside Enjolras. “It's not unusual for us to sing,” he warned.

“You're as bad as the rest of them,” she realized, her tone equal parts admiration and disgust. She took the space he had made for her, though not without a glance at Marius.

As it turned out, talking to Combeferre was lovely. He didn’t have Joly and Bossuet’s relentless cheer, Bahorel and Courfeyrac and Grantaire’s showmanship, Enjolras’s striking severity, or Jehan and Marius’s shyness. He was calm, gentle, eyes lighting up when he talked about science and philosophy and theatre. She ended up spending most of the party talking with him, though sometimes the boys who weren’t singing were pulled into the conversation. She even felt comfortable enough to sing along to the song she liked best, though only loudly enough for Combeferre to hear. The song was a smoky crackle of attitude that she imagined singing while strutting in shoes that had stiletto knives for heels. She had to resist the urge to belt the bridge, where the singer roared,  _"heaven knows I tried to let you go."_  

Between the company and the music, she was even able to take Courfeyrac's purr of  _"yeah, you're turning me on"_ as harmless fun. It helped that he was purring it at Grantaire, who was staring at the back of Enjolras's head, and Bossuet, who kept sneaking glances at a tired-looking Joly. Bahorel and the laughing one were making out against the wall.

When the song was over, Combeferre turned to her and murmured, “you have a lovely voice.”

She grinned in spite of herself. “Don’t tell anyone,” she murmured back.

He mimed zipping his lips. She mimed stealing the key and hiding it in her bra. His blush lit his entire face.

After Feuilly draw the cat nose and whiskers on Éponine, Jehan and Enjolras brought out the cake while the group sang happy birthday songs in at least six different languages, which just made the laughing stranger laugh harder. Éponine hadn't had birthday cake in years, but she was pretty sure lemon-lavender Greek yogurt pound cake dripping with homemade glaze was not standard. “Jehan made it," Enjolras declared, which explained everything.

Jehan blushed and looked at the floor. “I wanted to make something catlike,” he said mournfully, “but I couldn’t think of anything.”

“It’s delicious,” Enjolras assured him. It was indeed, a mouth-stinging mix of tart and sweet, creamy with yogurt and fragrant with lavender, though she was silently surprised that the ABC contained no vegans.

Feuilly wrapped his slice in a napkin before he (to the dramatic moans of everyone in the room, even Enjolras and Marius) left early.

“Okay, seriously,” Grantaire shouted unnecessarily as he half-danced half-staggered to the alcohol table. “Why is there no Lion King?”

“That’s what you get for not making the setlist,” said Bossuet.

“I contributed eighty percent of the selections,” he said haughtily, and downed several mouthfuls of wine as easily as if it were water. Éponine saw Enjolras’s lips tighten as he watched, but he said nothing.

Bossuet shook his head sympathetically. “You always were bad at math.”

“Stop drinking,” Joly chided, tugging at his leg. “You’ve been stage-two for hours. You’re going to pass out.”

“And we’re going to have to carry you,” Bossuet added, “which will only end in someone getting a concussion.”

“Yeah, but it’d probably be you,” Grantaire pointed out smugly. He took another long swallow, right from the wine bottle. That no one mentioned the cost of the wine was another reminder that these boys led lives more like the one she was born into than the one she had grown into.

“I can help!” volunteered Bahorel.

“Help with carrying him or help with giving someone a concussion?” asked Combeferre, cementing her impression that he was the smartest of the lot.

Grantaire was almost a quarter of the way through the wine bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing eyeliner on his cheek. “I will stop drinking when someone explains the _shameful lack_ of Circle of Life, only the greatest cat-related song ever heard.”

Enjolras had spent most of the party silently watching and listening, occasionally responding to something Marius or Jehan said to him. Now he replied smoothly, “we were afraid you would be drunk enough to try to pick up Combeferre like Simba, and then he would have sliced off your hands.”

“It would have been tragic, really,” Combeferre deadpanned, picking up on Enjolras’s dry humor as easily as Joly and Bossuet and Grantaire bounced off each other’s silliness.

Grantaire blinked at him twice, then said, “well, that’s silly. Hombre is clearly Zazu.” He put the bottle back on the table, ignoring Joly’s mournful mutter about germs

When the dancers returned to dancing and the others returned to the couches, Éponine returned to her spot next to Combeferre instead of vying for a space next to Marius. Marius had spent the cake-eating talking to Courfeyrac instead of her, anyway.

Apart from Feuilly’s early departure, Joly was the first to leave. Though he hadn’t danced at all, he looked exhausted. “Don’t let R walk home alone,” he ordered Bahorel and Bossuet.

The dancing ended when Memory from Cats started blasting and all of them, including Jehan and the people on the couch, sang along. Éponine sang as well, trusting Grantaire’s drunken warbling, Enjolras’s powerful belting, and Bahorel’s general volume to collectively shield her from notice.

"We can't top that!" Courfeyrac announced cheerfully, and turned the music off.

The dancers gathered around the food. Jehan, Enjolras, Éponine, and Marius joined them. The catnip was long gone and the sausage had turned cold, so they mostly ate tuna with their cake forks and cake with their hands. Jehan took a picture of them crouched and curling their hands into paws.

Grantaire stumbled away before most of them had finished eating and collapsed face-first onto the couch. Enjolras glanced at him, stood up, and went upstairs. Éponine fought a prickle of irritation and resumed listening to Courfeyrac and Combeferre’s heated discussion about the uncomfortable racial implications of Everybody Wants to Be a Cat.

A few minutes later, Enjolras came down with a blanket. He draped it over Grantaire and sat back on the floor.

Éponine blinked for a moment, then said, "okay, I need to go home. How much cake can I take before you stop inviting me to your concerts?"

"All of it," Courfeyrac replied immediately. "These two losers don't eat much sugar, so I'll end up eating  _the whole thing_ and my gorgeous abs cannot take that."

He was probably just saying it with the expectation that she would refuse, but politeness games always just left the polite person without what they wanted, so Éponine hoisted up the glass tupperware. "I'll return this to you in class?" she asked Jehan, who looked delighted that she was taking it.

"It's theirs, actually, but--don't worry about it; I'm sure one of us can give it to them, or you'll see one of them soon, doesn't matter."

"Can I walk you to your dorm?" Combeferre asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "Between the two of us, you realize you're more likely to be mugged on the street, right?" She observed her comments raise several hackles.

"I'm aware," he said, so mildly that the hackles all dropped. "I meant for company."

"Oh. Sure."

As they walked back to her dorm, she couldn't tell if her teeth hurt from Jehan's frosting or how much she was smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: reference to panic attacks and abuse
> 
> Sorry about this chapter; I was having a lot of writer's block, so it's pretty bad.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJmk7EQSYM&spfreload=10 = Samantha Barks dueting on Memory
> 
> My friend made Bahorel and Jehan Polyvores because she is amazing:  
> http://humboldt-squid.tumblr.com/post/114053801887/i-made-a-polyvore-set-for-an-outfit-worn-by (Bahorel)  
> http://humboldt-squid.tumblr.com/post/114138026312/i-made-another-polyvore-set-inspired-by (Jehan)


	7. don't need to turn me away

_Hatching from the seed of your orphaned mind, all night._  
_And you will go to Mykonos, with a vision of a gentle coast_  
_And a sun to maybe dissipate shadows of the mess you made._  
_Brother you don't need to turn me away._  
_I was waiting down at the ancient gate._  
_You go wherever you go today, you go today._

       --  _"Mykonos,"_ Fleet Foxes

 

**October, part 4**

Éponine woke up on Sunday with a song in her head.

It was a song Combeferre had soloed on at the last concert, a haunting piece with lyrics she didn’t quite understand. Combeferre had a lovely voice, and the line _“brother, you don’t need to turn me away”_ echoed in her mind. Songs about siblings always choked her up a little.

Gavroche still hadn’t texted.

\--

When Bossuet initially added her to the GroupMe for their Physics study group, it had been constantly abuzz with the boys chatting at each other--Joly cheerful, Bossuet sarcastic, Grantaire rarely comprehensible but frequently funny. After whatever had happened with green m&m’s and apple juice, it had quieted down; the past week had only been occasional questions about Physics, and a debate about where to have that week’s pset session; mostly a debate Grantaire had with himself, since he apparently knew the best places near campus to find everything.

On Saturday evening, a few hours before the party, he had given them the address of a cafe with _stupidly comfy chairs and the best muffins ever seriously I think the crystallized sugar on the raspberry ones are actually crack, and the apple cinnamon is mmmmm, plus the lady doesn’t care when I scream about how the ancient Greeks were overrated._

It was a small, nondescript cafe with bare gray walls. The chairs were indeed absurdly comfortable, and the muffins that Joly insisted on buying for her and Bossuet were so moist they left her fingers sticky. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” Joly told Éponine after moaning over a sugar-covered bit of raspberry, “but you look great today.”

“You really do,” Bossuet agreed.

Joly’s phone, which had been buzzing since he arrived, buzzed again. He carefully wiped his fingers on the napkin, picked it up, and giggled. “Oh my _god,_ R,” he muttered.

“Is he coming?” asked Bossuet.

The phone buzzed again. Joly giggled again. “Don’t think so.”

“Are you going to share that with the rest of the class?” asked Éponine.

Nervousness pinched Joly’s face. “Uh, I’m not sure if--”

“If you’re worrying about R’s privacy, I’ve listened to the dude drunk-ramble about how in love with Enjolras he is; I don’t think he’s too secretive.”

Joly brightened and passed over the phone. He and Grantaire (or, as Grantaire was known on Joly’s phone, “R! :D”) had a staggeringly long text log, but his phone conveniently chunked the texts by conversation. She scrolled to the beginning of the day.

 **From R! :D :** _Passed out on ECC’s house and so hungover I wanna die why do I make these choices Joly_    
**From Joly:** _YOU PASSED OUT ON A HOUSE? ARE YOU OKAY? DID YOU HIT YOUR HEAD?_  
**From R! :D :** _*in_  
**From Joly:** _Don't scare me like that.  
_ **From R! :D :** _Sorry._

The next chunk:

 **From R! :D :** _Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand he’s walking around in his underwear_  
**From R! :D :** _Not Couch. I would expect this behavior from couch._  
**From R! :D :** _No, the GOLDEN GREEK GOD OF CHASTITY AND PERFECT ABS IS WALKING AROUND IN HIS UNDERWEAR  
_**From R! :D :** _I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing that he’s blond everywhere and I do mean EVERYWHERE_

“I didn’t need to know that either,” Éponine muttered.

 **From R! :D :** _have very politely asked what injustice clothing has committed_  
**From R! :D :** _was at a pitch audible to dogs and most humans and didn’t even look at his crotch_  
**From R! :D :** _you should be proud of me_  
**From Joly:** _I’m always proud of you!_  
**From R! :D :** _“I’m defying the tyranny of pants,” he says, all deadpan and shirtless  
_ **From R! :D :** _this is so unfair he can’t just BE FUNNY when HE DOESN’T HAVE CLOTHING ON how dare you sir how dare_

Bossuet muttered, “this is worse than the time with the black jeans.”

 **From R! :D :** _pretended the helpless whimpering was the hangover and he BROUGHT ME A GLASS OF WATER. STILL WITHOUT PANTS.  
_ **From R! :D :** _And he’s doing his sexy disapproval thing that always makes me want to flirt at him but I CANNOT FLIRT AT HIM WHEN HE DOES NOT HAVE PANTS ON_

Éponine snorted. _No physics for you today, then?_ she typed.

 **From R! :D :** _HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK ON PHYSICS WHEN ENJOLRAS IS PEANUT-BUTTERING TOAST WITHOUT PANTS ON_  
**From R! :D :** _HE JUST ASKED WHAT KIND OF JAM I WANT ON MY TOAST_  
**From R! :D :** _Good sir, you could offer me a sock and I would chew on it just never wear a shirt again. It would be a public service.  
_**From R! :D :** _Might have said that last one out loud._

Bossuet grabbed his own phone. Some typing and a ping later, he showed them the conversation:

 **From Bossuet:** _stop texting my boyfriend and go eat toast with the attractive pantsless man  
_**From R:** _Eagle, you are a true national icon in spite of only being a Northern American._ _I’m sorry for that one time in rehearsal when I turned “Never Gonna Give You Up”_ _into a song about how you’re never gonna graduate._

“Northern American?”

Bossuet smiled self-deprecatingly, which wasn’t much of a statement, since Bossuet did everything self-deprecatingly. “It’s because I’m Canadian.”

\--

The song was called Mykonos, and the original was on Youtube, but it wasn’t the same without Combeferre’s voice.

\--

Grantaire knocked on her suite door after dinner. His first words upon seeing her were, “hello, Boobs!”

“What the fuck,” she replied, but stepped aside to let him in. He moved like his body was twice its usual weight. He took a few steps into the common room, looked around, muttered something, then flopped onto his back.

“Yes, Grantaire, please come inside and sleep in my common room.” She went to her room to grab the Physics pset, and paused in the bathroom. Joly and Bossuet had been right to say she looked good. Her golden skin glowed; her eyes danced with secret joy above the hint of watchful fear that always lurked in them. Grantaire had also been right. Éponine had never paid much attention to her breasts because she had never had any; she dressed to emphasize her tiny waist and gave no thought to letting her necklines fall low and loose.

Two months of buffet meals, free snacks at events, and random gifts like late-night Chinese and leftover cake had been kind to her body, and her neckline had missed the memo.

Good, she decided, and smiled decisively at the pretty girl in the mirror before returning to the common room.

Grantaire was still on the floor, arm thrown over his eyes as if the light offended him.

“Oh god, what did Enjolras do?”

Without removing his arm, Grantaire frowned. “What? Nothing. He fed me toast and leftover sausages and asked about the setlist that I hadn’t started making--which was fine, I came up with a bunch of shit off the top of my head; I think I’m gonna go with most of it!--and he got really passionate about the commercialization of the military.” His frown melted into a rather silly smile.

“And the bit where you’re currently stretched out on my floor…”

“Oh, that’s just me.” He removed his arm but didn’t open his eyes. “I can get up?”

“But it has nothing to do with spending the morning with the guy who doesn’t love you back.”

He snorted. “Not how that works.” He eyed the ceiling contemplatively. "It’s like, I drink to forget life, and he’s like that. The forgetting. Around him, it feels less like life is just...people keep telling me the world is my oyster, but it’s a rotten stinky oyster, and he’s just. A shiny thing. A thing that isn’t rotten."

"You should write poetry."

"Fuck you," Grantaire said cheerfully, then sighed. "I was with him, so I was. Well, not happy, but I felt something besides shitty. I felt like a _person._ And now I don't. So that sucks. But if I hadn't talked to him, I'd still be lying around making melodramatic metaphors.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

“Damn right.” It was remarkable, how well he could do his insolent, cocky voice while lying on the floor. “He was a break from the shitty, not the reason for it.”

“Do you want an excuse to see him? I’ve got that cake container--”

“Ugh, no. Don’t make him look at me when I’m all,” he waved an arm to encompass himself -- supine on the floor, ugly face made uglier by the lack of its usual animation.

She frowned. “You think he’d be a dick about it?”

Grantaire turned his head, thwacking his cheek against the floor. His expression was shocked. “Are you kidding me? I’m sad and I’m sober and he’s got enough of a savior complex to feed all the babies of Africa. He’d try to take care of me, and that’s bullshit.” He turned his head back to the ceiling. “He already gets to deal with me drinking and ranting and goofing off; he doesn’t have to babysit me on top of that. He never asked to be my…”

“Your shiny thing?”

He pointed at her, then turned to his finger with a horrified expression. “Courfeyrac is infecting me,” he whispered. It would have been a flawless rendition of his usual antics, if he weren’t on the floor and using Courfeyrac’s actual name.

“What’s actually wrong, then?”

Grantaire shrugged, facing the ceiling and closing his eyes again. “This is just how I get when I don’t have my booze or my boys. Hmm, no, can’t say that now that I’ve got Buttercup. Sorry, I should have bugged someone else, but I really _was_ planning to do physics, and also there’s trouble in paradise and Buttercup’s got their own social life and Duckling--”

“If you were bugging me, I’d kick you out,” she interrupted. “My floor doesn’t care if someone’s moping on it. I just--really, there’s nothing wrong?”

“Don't you ever just feel shitty for no reason?"

Éponine thought about it. "I always have a reason."

Grantaire put his arm back over his eyes. "Sorry about your life.”

The sad thing was, he didn't sound sarcastic at all.

“What do you know about my life,” she said softly. It didn’t quite come out a question.

“I know you eat like someone’s going to take the food away, and your shoes don’t fit, and you walk around with knives. I know you threaten people who get close, but when people actually, say, throw foam nun-chucks at your head, you don’t flinch. I know you walk around barefoot at two in the morning without a coat on. I know you’ve been checking your phone every two minutes for weeks, even though you don’t have a phone plan and I haven’t seen you get a message in a while. I don’t know _why_ any of that, but it probably doesn’t involve rainbows and gumdrops, you know?”

She felt frozen. Her instinct was to deny his words, or step on him, or maybe tell him everything. But none of the instincts her life had embedded in her applied to Grantaire. So she did what she thought he would do, and answered, “does anyone actually like gumdrops?”

“What even is a gumdrop?” He sounded more like himself now. Or at least, the version of himself that she was familiar with. She wondered if she counted as one of his boys.

The others would have had quips to lob back at him. She just looked at him for a moment, then asked, “you aren’t going to work on physics right now, are you?”

He replied with something extremely eloquent about relativistic electromagnetism, which possibly would have made sense to fellow philosophy majors, or possibly only made sense to him.

“Wanna sleep on my floor?”

He nodded, jostling his arm slightly in the process.

Éponine shrugged and brought her multivariable calculus problem set to the common room. She half-hummed, half-crooned, _“when a-walking brother, don’t you forget.”_

Grantaire, now lying sideways with his face half-mushed into the floor, hummed what might have been the next line _(“it ain’t often that you’ll ever find a friend,”)_ or might have been part of a dream. Éponine clamped her lips shut, irrationally feeling as if she had been caught in a crime.

She glared when her suitemates passed and stared, daring them to comment. They said nothing to her face, though she heard their whispers as they huddled in one of the bedrooms, and Irma's not-especially-whispered, "but he's so _ugly."_

A few hours later, Grantaire sat bolt upright and shouted, “PEARL. THAT WAS THE WORD I WAS LOOKING FOR.” Éponine threw her calculus notebook at his head.

\--

When Éponine came to Chemistry on Monday, Jehan was hunched over his desk, staring at a piece of paper with an expression of abject misery.

And okay, maybe Grantaire was an alcoholic cynic who saw life as a rotten oyster, but Jehan was a Disney deer who spent his days frolicking through meadows, his nights stargazing, and his brainpower contemplating everything from fair wages to freedom of thought. If someone had made _him_ unhappy, the knives Éponine carried everywhere would finally come to use.

“Who do I have to shiv?” she demanded by way of greeting.

He smiled tiredly at her, eyes still sad. “Hi, ’Ponine.”

“No, seriously, tell me who to kill.” The boy was wearing a romper printed with tiny owls in hot air balloons, for crying out loud. No one with that sort of courage was meant to be sad.

“That’s not,” Jehan looked back at his paper, which from anyone else would look like avoidance, but she knew Jehan just didn’t like eye contact. “I arrange songs sometimes, I mean, I’m not the only one who does, but I like to. So people will ask me to arrange songs for them--”

“If you’re busy or don’t feel like it, tell me them to fuck off.”

“It’s not that!” His head jerked up, and she saw what she saw during lunch when he was talking about property, or marriage, or credit, or whatever he was feeling passionate about that discussion: behind the easy blush and timid smiles, Jehan had a core of steel. “I like to do it, and they’re all my friends. They’re more like my _family._ It’s just…” he touched the piece of paper, which she now saw was covered in lyrics of musical notes. “It just makes me sad, sometimes, what they want to sing about.”

“War toy industry again?” She quite liked _Hey Ho, So it Goes,_ but the topic certainly wasn't a chipper one, even if the tune was disarmingly pleasant.

“No, those songs are why we exist. It’s,” he shook his head, and said stoutly, “I shouldn’t discuss my friends’ private business.”

“Is this about whatever’s making Joly and Eagle look like there are landmines in their shoes?”

Mingled relief and despair crossed his expression. “Do you know about--?”

Marius chose that moment to show up. Éponine had never expected there to be a time when she wasn’t happy to see _Marius._ “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Oh, I was just asking Jehan if he could send me a recording of Combeferre’s solo on Mykonos.”

A shocking amount of happiness burst across Jehan's face. “We have rehearsal tonight! You could come!”

“Right, that wouldn’t be disruptive at all,” she snorted, belatedly taking her seat.

Marius sat beside her. “You can’t be more disruptive than R,” he said, which wasn’t nearly as reassuring as he clearly intended it to be, but it was sweet of him to try.

\--

She didn’t go to the rehearsal, because she had to analyze a Mandarin-language article on Chinese overseas investment and write a short response, and finish several pages of calculus. Besides, there had to be a line between “attend concerts and social events” and “trot after Marius like a lovesick puppy.” She wasn’t sure entirely where that line was, but attending rehearsal seemed to be on the wrong side of it.

Before going to sleep, she checked her email for news from Gavroche. Instead there were three messages from student clubs she hadn’t signed up for, a notification from the campus police about underage drinking, and a Facebook friend request from Combeferre. She accepted it without hesitation, and found a message from him. It didn't surprise her at all that Combeferre opened and closed Facebook messages the way most people did cover letters. If anything, she was surprised he hadn't included his job title and mailing address.

_“Dear Eponine,_

_Jehan mentioned that you wanted a recording of Mykonos. I’m sorry if this was presumptuous of me, but I went ahead and made one. There’s a video and an mp3, since I didn’t know which you would prefer._

_In addition, one of the other boys asked about getting you a free ticket to our joint concert with a visiting group. Do you have any interest in ushering? It would theoretically require showing up a bit early, but we can be flexible. If that isn’t feasible with your schedule, well, I meant it when I said no one in this group actually cares about making money (philosophically, I appreciate this. As the business manager, it pains me, but I acknowledge it as a fact.)_

_Best wishes,_

_Combeferre”_

Someone, probably Feuilly, had done a bit of sound editing, so the solo wasn't swallowed up by the background as it had been by the concert. His voice rang warm and clear, even through her cheap dollar-store headphones. An inexplicable tear started in her eye when the recording reached the bridge, quickly wiped away as he crooned, _"I remember how they took you down, as the winter turned the meadow brown."_ She thought about walking with Azelma and Gavroche through trees whose leaves were turning golden and red, glittering in the sunlight like flames. Gavroche had gone running ahead of them, catching falling leaves and throwing them at his sisters. Éponine had thought of him as a green leaf gleaming in the wind, and herself as a tree that had gone brown before its leaves could begin to change color, her branches prematurely bare and grasping like bony, needy hands.

In context of his message, the recording felt a bit like a bribe. Not that it was effective to give a bribe before acquiring one’s own end of the bargain.

Éponine put it on her phone anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I atone for taking a while to post the last chapter, in which not much happens, by immediately posting this chapter, in which not much happens. Anyone who has watched Graceland (in which Aaron Tveit does many things in his underwear, including but not limited to making the bed and walking crotch-first toward the camera) will know R's pain.
> 
> For those who have Spotify, Michigan's G-Men do a lovely cover of Mykonos (I would have arranged the shoe part in the bridge differently, but I'm excessively picky.) That said, unlike Éponine, my favorite is the original version.


	8. places only they would know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER COMES WITH TRIGGER WARNINGS. PLEASE SEE THE END NOTES. (If you do not have triggers, please DON'T check the end notes, because spoilers.)

_I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told._  
_I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles,_  
_such are promises: all lies and jest. Still, a man hears_  
_what he wants to hear and disregards the rest._  
_When I left my home and my family,_  
_I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers,_  
_in the quiet of the railway station, running scared._  
_Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters_  
_where the ragged people go,_  
_looking for the places only they would know._

\--  _"The Boxer,"_ Simon  & Garfunkel

 

**October, part 5**

Éponine had spent every Halloween that she could remember telling her younger siblings scary stories and charming adults out of extra candy. Gavroche was the master of candy collection; one of the rare moments that her father showed any pride in him was when Éponine relayed the story of Gavroche’s entirely straight-faced, “hmmm, I’m not sure two snickers and only _one_ bag of candy corn is enough for my tootsie roll. I _really like_ this tootsie roll.”

This Halloween, there was no trick-or-treating (there _was_ something called liquor treating, which Grantaire was very excited about dragging Joly and Bossuet into doing) and no Azelma or Gavroche.

There was, however, an ABC party on Friday night. It was a few days before the actual date of Halloween, either to accommodate their homework schedules or to avoid Grantaire arriving post-liquor treating.

One of her suitemates lent her a pair of fishnet tights and the other lent her a short, deliciously slinky dress. She considered her unfamiliar, curvy body in the mirror and rolled her messy hair into a bun. The ABC seemed like a group that would appreciate the musical where women in their underwear sang about killing their husbands, so she turned a scrunchie into a garter and tucked one of her knives in.

\--

After Courfeyrac’s party, she was unsurprised by the quantity of red and black streamers and paper bats tacked up all over what she couldn’t help but think of as the Triumvirate House. “It’s all recycled and it’s going to be reused,” assured Jehan, who wore a green dress with a gaudy belt covered in fake plastic flowers and leaves, with a flower crown on his head and his cheeks shimmering with curls of green eyeliner and large patches of blush probably intended to represent flowers. More fake plastic flowers adorned the torn pieces of fishnet stockings, probably courtesy of Bahorel, that he wore as fingerless gloves.

Éponine had taken for granted that the decorations were painstakingly environmentally friendly; she was more curious about which of the ABC members had a vendetta against orange. Whoever it was clearly hadn’t been in charge of candy, given the mounds of mallowcreme pumpkins on the conspicuously alcohol-free table. Joly, already clearly sugar-high, offered her a handful as soon as he noticed her looking. “It’s like the best parts of candy corn, concentrated!” he squealed. “Also, this is my friend Musichetta! This is Éponine. She’s a friend of the ABC. And a friend in general.”

From Joly’s gushing, she had expected someone small and smart and lovely, with glasses and a soft voice. Musichetta had dark, piercing eyes and a body that looked to be solid muscle, though her hands and feet were surprisingly tiny. She was dressed as Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but when Grantaire (who was dressed as a priest, because Grantaire thought he was hilarious) asked if that was offensive, Musichetta turned a stern gaze on him and said, “did you know that in the book, Esmeralda was discovered to be a French girl named Agnes? Her mom was a _white French woman_ who some rich asshole seduced, so she ended up a poor prostitute, and then the Roma kidnapped Agnes and stuck Quasimodo in her place. Which, in addition to being a dumb coincidence, is just like, of course an _actual_ Roma can’t be anyone’s love interest. So who am I offending by being a brown girl dressed as a white girl?”

Grantaire blinked at her. “I’m too sober to tell if that logic follows, but I appreciate how scary you are,” he said gravely.

“Okay, but how amazing was Hellfire?” Courfeyrac demanded as he gulped a sip of milkshake without a straw, which either said bad things about the milkshakes or strange things about Courfeyrac. “Like, Disney producing a song about how creepy rapist dudes think they’re awesome and their creepy rapist-ness is the girls’ fault.” He was dressed in a puffy pink dress and a curly golden wig.

“I especially liked the _‘mea culpa’_ in the background,” supplied Combeferre from the couch. “The entire film has some fascinating use of religious music, especially during the climactic scene.”

He was wearing grey sweatpants and a metallic grey turtleneck, with silver eye makeup smeared on his face and in his hair. Enjolras, on the couch beside him, wore a checkered red flannel button-down with fake straw dangling out of the sleeves, torn jeans that were probably Courfeyrac’s, and a straw hat. Feuilly, who was manning the blender, was in the poor man’s equivalent of a lion costume, which consisted of a brown t-shirt, khaki pants, Courfeyrac’s wig from the birthday party, and yet another astonishing face painting accomplishment.

Éponine wished she had gotten the memo. She would have been a great Elphaba.

“I still think you should have been my Djali,” Musichetta informed Joly, pinching his cheek.

He flushed and stuttered for what Éponine estimated was a full forty-nine seconds before he stoutly declared, “my costume is joint with Bossuet’s.” He was dressed as a surgeon. Bossuet wasn’t there yet.

“He could have been Phoebus.”

“I’d be a great Quasimodo!” offered Grantaire. “I wouldn’t even need a disguise, except maybe shoving a pillow under my shirt.”

Enjolras looked up from listening to Combeferre and Courfeyrac discuss religious music in their respective cultures to give Grantaire a look of sharp disapproval.

“Or I could...be a gargoyle?” Grantaire suggested weakly.

Éponine sipped the milkshake, which was indeed too milky, but at least it was mint chocolate chip. She loved mint and chocolate; the combination reminded her of her mom driving her and Azelma home from school, or driving them out of the house for no clear reason and stopping at Dairy Queen so Éponine could eat a mint chocolate dilly bar and Azelma could eat a caramel or hot fudge sundae (always taking too long to decide, so by the time her choice arrived, Éponine had finished her dilly bar and could eat half of Azelma’s sundae) and her mom could eat a peanut buster parfait.

Much later, she learned that the impromptu ice cream had been to remove them from the house when her dad bargained with a human trafficker for girls to work at the family inn. She treasured the memory all the more for the knowledge that her mom had once tried to protect them.

Bahorel, who was wearing the single most impressive Frank’n’Furter costume Éponine had ever beheld, saved her from her reverie by getting their own milkshake and complimenting, “hot Velma. Or Roxie? Or random merry murderess?”

“Velma, _obviously._ You need to teach me how to apply eyeliner one of these days.”

“Can I do your make-up?” Jehan offered excitedly.

Éponine looked at his blush-blotches. “I love you, but--”

 _“But_ you need me to teach you first,” interrupted Bahorel. They grinned at Éponine. “Want to be my palette?”

And that was how she ended up sitting on the floor with Bahorel applying her make-up while while Jehan took meticulous notes. In the background, Musichetta shamelessly flirted at an increasingly stuttery Joly while Feuilly told Enjolras about the electricity blackout in Gaza that week and Grantaire debated with Courfeyrac over whether they should watch _Hocus Pocus_ or _Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein_. Combeferre had abandoned the couch to sit beside Éponine, though she knew he had no interest in lipstick (Bahorel’s advice on picking a shade: “doesn’t matter what you wear, just stay inside the lines and fucking rock it, because if you know you can pull it off, you can punch anyone who says otherwise in the teeth.”)

Courfeyrac and Grantaire were still debating when they walked, side-by-side, to answer the door.

Éponine, glad she was seated facing the door, fully expected Marius to walk in dressed like Toto. Instead, he had on a red ABC t-shirt, and golden curls that had almost certainly been cut from Courfeyrac’s wig were pinned to his hair.

Grantaire took one look at him and laughed so hard he fell onto Bossuet, who had arrived alongside Marius with a shirt styled after the game Operation.

Enjolras smiled.

Marius blushed. “Is it okay?” he stammered. “Courfeyrac suggested--”

“It’s _amazing,”_ Grantaire assured him, managing to leap forward without a stumble when Bossuet pushed him away. It didn’t escape Éponine’s attention that he waited to push until Grantaire had finished laughing.

“We dressed as E and R last year,” Bossuet told Marius. No one had to ask who ‘we’ were.

Enjolras’s warm, pleased expression turned confused. “I thought you dressed as Apollo and Dionysus.”

“Same thing,” Bossuet said.

“Bossuet really wanted to have a bedsheet and a beer bottle and say he was dressed as R,” Joly told Musichetta, who dimpled in amusement. “Because he’s funny.”

“Clearly.” Her eyes traced up and down Bossuet’s body as if he weren’t short, chubby, and mostly bald. “So you’re the famous Bossuet.” She extended a tiny hand. “He won’t shut up about you.”

“Likewise,” said Bossuet. He briefly hesitated before shaking her hand.

“It’s because you’re both awesome! You’d get along. Ask her about the architecture in _Hunchback of Notre Dame,”_ he ordered, shoving Bossuet forward. Since he was skinny and leaning on his cane, the shove shouldn’t have had much impact, but Bossuet stumbled forward anyway, if only from surprise.

Joly latched onto Grantaire’s arm and tugged him in the direction of the couch. “So what movies are we thinking of watching?” he demanded, his voice too high.

 _‘What the hell,’_ Éponine mouthed at Grantaire.

“Do not move your face when I am contouring, woman!” yelled Bahorel. Éponine jerked her head away instinctively.

“Bahorel,” Combeferre’s voice had abruptly gone as hard as steel, “maybe you should have another milkshake.”

Bahorel rushed to the food table, where Musichetta was now flirting shamelessly at Bossuet instead. Grantaire leaned near Éponine’s ear and murmured, “it was Bald Eagle’s idea to have Santa invite Musichetta.” Before she could ask, he spun around and said to Courfeyrac, unnecessarily loudly, “I’m just saying that I don’t trust the opinion of anyone who didn’t approve of _Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost.”_

“It plays into the idea that accused means guilty,” Courfeyrac objected. “You build up that this woman burned for witchcraft didn’t deserve it, and then, nope, she’s actually a witch! Also, I’m _Catholic_ and _even I_ know that Wicca does not work that way.”

“I thought it was beautiful,” said Jehan mournfully.

“You think everything is beautiful,” Grantaire pointed out.

“Is that why you guys sing a Hex Girls song?” asked Éponine. She had seen the movie once and heard them perform _Earth, Wind, Fire, and Air_ once, but she had an excellent memory. It ran in the family.

Jehan glowed with quiet, blushing pressure. “I arranged it.”

“What did them Hex Girls have against water?” demanded Bahorel, still at the table.

“Witches are allergic to water!” Courfeyrac cried. “As the Good Witch of the...wherever Galinda was the witch of, I would know.”

“I thought they weren’t actually witches,” muttered Marius.

“Elphaba isn’t allergic to water in Wicked,” Bossuet objected.

“She is in the book,” corrected Musichetta.

Grantaire tossed himself backwards, flailing, part of his body ending up on Joly, who giggled helplessly while halfheartedly attempting to wave him off. “I’m _meelting,_ I’m _meeeeelting!”_ Grantaire shrieked.

Predictably, this turned into a debate about which elements each of them represented, which turned into a debate about which elements they were counting.

\--

“Metal isn’t an element!” complained Grantaire, still half on the floor and half on Joly, who had clearly given up on escape. Most of his dark curls were mashed against Enjolras’s leg. Enjolras didn’t comment.

“It is if you stop being so Euro-centric!” retorted Musichetta, earning a first-pump and a whoop from Feuilly.

\--

 _“And we’ll never be ROYals!”_ Grantaire boomed, apropos of nothing.

 _“ROYals!”_ echoed Jehan in falsetto.

No one batted an eye. “This happens a lot,” Musichetta determined, because she was a wise and discerning soul.

“Yep,” Bossuet confirmed unnecessarily.

\--

The debate ended when Bahorel overturned the table. Ice cream and milk splashed all over Bossuet. Joly yelped, and Grantaire immediately leapt to his feet and helped Joly stand so Joly could, cane abandoned on the floor, rush over to Bossuet. “Are you okay?”

Bossuet chuckled and wiped his face with his arm. Since his arm was just as splashed as his face, it had little effect. “It’s fine, Jollly. A little ice cream never hurt no one.”

“Ice cream has hurt lots of people,” Joly insisted. His expression was so full of earnest concern that no one made fun of him.

Courfeyrac clapped two hands together, businesslike. “Fellow Ozians,” he decreed in a remarkable impression of Kristin Chenoweth, as Feuilly rushed to help Bahorel turn the table upright, “my blender has been smashed by a great hurricane from the planet of Transylvania. Therefore, let us put aside our opinions for one night, and watch my movie.”

“You got your references mixed there,” Jehan pointed out as he and Combeferre fetched towels.

Bahorel scooped up an armful of mallowcreme pumpkins. “You heard the witch. We break his blender, we watch his movie.”

Éponine expected Grantaire to object that it wasn’t _his_ fault Bahorel had overturned the table, but he was watching Bossuet and Joly with an expression of mingled relief and adoration. Musichetta was watching them fondly as well. _You have no idea anything is wrong,_ Éponine observed, looking at her. _You just see two adorable dorks in love._ To be fair, in that moment, it was impossible to see anything else.

Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre were all thinner than Bossuet, and Combeferre at least was shorter, so Éponine expected Bossuet to have to resort to another bedsheet, but it turned out that their three-person household had a fourth bedroom (Combeferre and Enjolras had the upper floor and Courfeyrac the two-bedroom lower floor to himself, which Éponine strongly suspected came with the order that he _keep the parties downstairs)_ and Bossuet, for reasons no one explained to her, sometimes slept in the empty bedroom next to Courfeyrac, so he took a quick shower and came downstairs wearing a spare pair of his own pajama pants and no shirt. Grantaire loudly pretended to be disturbed by the sight, but Joly (and Musichetta, Éponine reluctantly noticed) certainly didn’t seem to mind.

A triumphant Courfeyrac put _Hocus Pocus_ on. “Alright,” Grantaire looked around. “We all know I’m too much of a shit to stay awake during a movie I didn’t agree to watch, so whose shoulder do I get to sleep on?”

Enjolras looked at him sharply. “Are you sober?”

“One beer four hours ago.”

Enjolras scooted so he was on the arm of the couch. Grantaire stared. Enjolras patted his own shoulder and Grantaire was on the couch so quickly Éponine barely saw his feet move. Then he very slowly, like he wasn’t sure this was happening and half-expected it to dissolve under his head, rested his cheek against Enjolras’s shoulder.

Éponine grinned like an idiot. She caught Bossuet’s eye, then Jehan’s, and they grinned like idiots at each other.

She ended up with Combeferre on one side and Marius on the other, an ideal arrangement. Once again, she walked from the Triumvirate House to her dorm with sore teeth, a smile, and a container full of their leftovers.

\--

In retrospect, after such a good Friday night, she should have seen Saturday coming.

Ushering was easy. The pre-performance portion involved very little interaction with the ABC, though several waved and thanked her; they had to go through the choppy portions of the songs. There were _actual microphones_ this time. Feuilly set them up, which was perhaps the least surprising thing that had happened all week. “It’s better to have someone running sound in real time, since the volumes are so different,” he acknowledged, “but what can you do.”

For the first time, she properly understood why Enjolras and even Bossuet seemed to lose patience with Grantaire sometimes--he spent the entire pre-performance portion goofing off and singing parody lyrics. Enjolras was surprisingly tolerant, which was to say Enjolras ignored him. They all did, more or less, though Bahorel did bellow _“LAWYERS”_ in response to Grantaire’s, _“and we’ll never be ROYals.”_ Joly laughed. Combeferre closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead. Éponine could relate to both of them.

The visiting all-girl group had swagger, impressive choreography, and a jaw-dropping “I Put a Spell on You” that was darker, angrier, and more possessive than the bouncy fun of the Hocus-Pocus version. Still, Éponine found herself impatient with them, and resenting that they meant the ABC had fewer songs, and were mostly singing duets, to maximize the number of singers in the spotlight.

On principle, she wanted to dislike Feuilly and Bossuet’s duet. She couldn’t, because it was a searingly gorgeous arrangement of “The Boxer.”

When they reached the line about wishing they were going home, she found herself pretending to go to the bathroom and instead hovering near the performance room, holding herself as she listened to their voices slice through the words, _“and he carries the reminder of every glove that laid him down and cut him till he cried out, in his anger and his shame: ‘I am leaving, I am leaving!’ But the fighter still remains.”_

She didn’t cry. She was proud to be a fighter. It didn’t have to be something to cry about.

Éponine softly sang along to the final lai-la-lai-lai chorus before walking back into the performance room. She was revitalized by energetically mouthing along to Bahorel and Enjolras dueting on “What You Own,” Bahorel’s first proper performance in the group.

If her eyes weren’t sharp, she might have missed Joly grabbing Combeferre’s arm, face pale and slightly sweaty. She certainly would have missed Grantaire whispering into Enjolras’s ear as he returned to his spot. Enjolras certainly acted like nothing was amiss as he stepped forward again and announced, “that was the first performance outside of the shoe for one of our new members, Pallaton Bahorel. Now please enjoy a few more songs by our guests.”

Some of the girls exchanged confused glances and mutters, but they filed onto stage as the ABC filed off. Éponine followed them into the entryway between the performance room and the courtyard. Joly had already darted out the door to the courtyard.

“Officers need to have a meeting!” Grantaire announced, catching the door before it closed. Bossuet surged toward the door; Grantaire spun to face him. “You are _not_ an officer.”

Bossuet froze.

 _“R,”_ Marius half-whispered half-shouted.

“If Courfeyrac told you Combeferre needed you not to be near him, would you trust him?” Grantaire demanded of Enjolras, who looked as stunned as the rest of them.

In a tiny, half-choked voice, Bossuet said, “I trust you.”

“Sorry,” replied Grantaire, sounding like he meant it.

Enjolras nodded, and everyone was back in motion--Grantaire swept out the door, throwing Courfeyrac a meaningful look; Courfeyrac wrapped an arm around Bossuet’s shoulder; Combeferre, Enjolras, and Feuilly followed Grantaire; Marius took Bossuet’s hand; Jehan closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders like he was trying not to cry; Bahorel pulled Jehan into a hug. Only Bossuet remained frozen, staring at the closed door.

Éponine followed the officers out the door. She didn’t want to see what was happening to Joly, but she couldn’t stay in the entryway.

Joly had run a surprising distance across the courtyard before apparently collapsing. He now huddled on his knees, head down and shoulders trembling, cane abandoned several paces behind. The officers were around him, near but not too near.

Éponine stood at the door. Enjolras’s voice carried easily across the courtyard, quiet but clear. “Physical contact, yes or no.”

Joly lifted his face and scanned the four boys surrounding him. His sweat gleamed in the moonlight. His skinny chest heaved. “Only R,” he rasped. Grantaire was on his knees at Joly’s side in an instant, arm wrapped around him and rubbing. Joly pressed his shoulder against Grantaire’s neck, emitting a series of noises that might have been gasps or sobs. It took several repetitions for Éponine to hear the words behind the sounds: “stupid, stupid, _stupid.”_

“Stop talking shit about my best friend,” said Grantaire quietly.

The next sound was definitely a sob, followed by several ragged, aborted attempts to inhale. Grantaire kept rubbing, murmuring as he did, a steady stream of soothing nonsense.

“It’s not even,” Joly started, then cut himself off hyperventilating. Grantaire stopped talking, but kept rubbing. “It’s not even like I _want_ him to not--and I know I’m supposed to be singing right now _I should be_ but if I do it feels like I’m _admitting_ that--and I can, I _can,_ but--” he sobbed again, three short sobs that turned into choking.

“You don’t have to do anything, Santa. And someone can cover your duet, so that isn’t even an issue. Just because you _can_ do something doesn’t mean--” he fell silent again when Joly’s choking switched back to hyperventilating. His hand hadn’t stopped running slow, soothing circles against Joly’s arm.

When Joly spoke again, his voice was so tattered it was barely recognizable.  “I don’t _want_ to.”

Éponine ran out of the courtyard, the pounding of her feet and ears so loud she must have imagined Joly’s small, cracked, “I just want him to be _happy”_ and Grantaire’s gentle, “I know.”

\--

She had thought about going to the school peer counselors before, in the same way she thought about jumping when she neared the edge of rooftops. It was an obvious possibility, but not a probable one. She never got past the door labeled PEER COUNSELORS.

She raced down into the building, down the stairs, through the hall, shoving the door open without knocking.

The room was small, with a table and a couch, and two chairs on the other side of the couch. One of the girls on the chairs lifted her head to smile at Éponine.

She was a beautiful Asian girl, skin flawless, nose adorable, hair lustrous. She was absurdly well-dressed for the tiny room, in a dark blue satin skirt that reached mid-calf. But it was her eyes which stood out, glowing with confidence and strength, the eyes of someone who had been plunged into sorrow and who had found her way back to the surface.

“Hello,” she began, “welcome to--”

“No,” Éponine’s voice came out at once harsh and ragged, “not _you.”_

She slammed out the door and raced down the hallway. It felt longer than it had on the way down. Two turns. When the cold autumn air struck her face, chilling the sweat that streaked her nose and forehead, she stopped running. She crumpled onto the steps leading to the door, nails digging into her arms until even her fingers ached.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: panic attack, mention of suicidal ideation, semi-deliberate self-injury
> 
> The "Royals" thing was stolen from Tumblr; I'll link to the specific post once we get to the punchline.


	9. laugh with the sinners

  
_Darling, only the good die young_  
_You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd._  
_We ain’t too pretty, we ain’t too proud._  
_We might be laughing a bit too loud,_  
_aww, but that never hurt no one._

        -- _"Only the Good Die Young,"_ Billy Joel

 

**End of October, November**

During Sunday’s pset session, Joly barely waved an arm; his arms were occupied clinging to Bossuet with an expression of apology and moderate panic. Éponine tried not to wonder what was going on, but it didn’t stop her from eavesdropping when Grantaire went to the bathroom and Bossuet went after him. She couldn’t make out most of what they said, but she did hear Grantaire’s abrupt, “do you hate me?”

Joly, who was bent over the pset she knew he had finished before the study session began as if he wasn’t also eavesdropping, gripped his cane and inhaled sharply.

“R, you complete _dingus,”_ Bossuet replied, followed by a thud and an _“oof”_ that was hopefully an overenthusiastic tacklehug rather than Bossuet injuring his hand by punching Grantaire. Either way, they broke out into laughter. Éponine and Joly -- and, she was sure, Grantaire -- started breathing again.

\--

She did not spend the actual night of Halloween liquor-treating with Grantaire, Bossuet, and Courfeyrac. She did not spend it going to a concert with her suitemates. She didn’t even spend it clicking around on Facebook like a proper college student, because she didn’t want to see the latest lyric about love or longing that Marius had posted as his Facebook status, and she hadn’t decided what to do about Musichetta’s friend request. She spent Halloween working on Mandarin characters and multivariable calculus, and trying not to think about Marius or Gavroche or anything that had happened on Saturday.

November 1st graced her with a message from an unknown number.

 **From Unknown:** _m+d sold my phone like what the hell_  
**From Unknown:** _do u know the market value on a phone that old NOT HIGH  
_**From Unknown:** _its ok i stole a kids ipod touch its not like i used my phone as a phone anyway_

She did not take a leaf out of Joly’s book and add the number to her contacts under the name “Gavroche!! <3 <3 :)”, but it was a close call.

 **From Éponine** : _EMAIL ME NEXT TIME_  
**From Gavroche:** _using what?_  
**From Éponine** : _Point._  
**From Éponine** : _I’m not sure you’re supposed to enjoy stealing as much as you do._  
**From Gavroche:** _if i have to anyway why the fuck not have fun amirite  
_**From Gavroche:** _besides he was dressed as a “terrorist” either he deserves it or his parents do_

Éponine wished he were coming for Parents Weekend. The ABC would love him.

\--

Feuilly arrived at lunch with a sigh and dropped his head into his arms.

“Amen,” said Éponine.

“Ooh, are we spending lunch with our heads on the table?” asked Grantaire as Joly nervously checked a tolerant Feuilly for signs of fever or head injury. “That’s my favorite.”

“The concert is going to be in Musain Hall,” Feuilly groaned.

“You mean the same place we had our last three major concerts?” asked Bossuet. “The horror. We must alert Dean Lamarque at once.”

Feuilly flicked a pea at his head. It impressively managed to hit his forehead, bounce off his forehead, and hit his bald spot. “Can you explain the physics of how that happened?” Grantaire asked Joly.

Joly dutifully pulled his notebook, which was stuffed with about three notebooks’ worth of torn sheets and post-it notes, and managed to find a blank page. As Grantaire leaned over his shoulder, Éponine turned to Feuilly and Bossuet and asked, “What’s the issue with Musain?” It was a large lecture hall with a wooden stage. It seemed fine to her.

“The issue is that it’s hard enough finding someone available to run sound _during family weekend_ ;Jehan asked his friend who runs sound at some of his poetry slams, and when he told her it was in the Musain she burst out laughing.”

“Is this the part where you break into perfectly synchronized explanations about why the Musain sound system is awful?”

“I don’t know either,” Joly admitted.

“Well, the acoustics are much drier than they have any right to be, and the balance is weird, but we’re a nontraditional group so what do you expect,” said Grantaire.

“I don’t know about the acoustics, but the signal flow is weird, and there aren’t enough XLR patch points, and also half the time the mics just don’t do what you tell them to do,” said Feuilly.

“The mic died on me every single time,” Bossuet informed Éponine. “Of course, that also happened at that one rally we sang at.”

“It was the white-run sound system trying to silence black voices,” said Grantaire without looking up from Joly’s eager scribbling.

“How does running sound work?”

“You turn a few knobs,” Grantaire said. “I’ve run a sound board when I was doing lights freshman year; it was just mics and cues, and with a capella you don’t need cues.”

Most of those words didn’t make sense, but Éponine said, “I could do it.”

Grantaire and Joly looked up from the paper.

“What?” Éponine asked. “I’m going to be there anyway, I can turn knobs. And I won’t care about dry acoustics or XLR patches, because I have no idea what the fuck you’re on about.”

“Combeferre is going to kiss you full on the mouth,” said Feuilly slowly, like he was in a daze. She didn’t see what the big deal was, but she couldn’t help smiling.

\--

Combeferre did not in fact kiss her on the mouth, but he did send her an embarrassingly grateful Facebook message.

“If it wouldn’t be inconvenient, would you be willing to attend one of our rehearsals this week? We’ll have one on Wednesday and Thursday evening, and Saturday afternoon. That would give Feuilly a chance to show you how the system works, and you a chance to hear our set in advance. Or if it’s easier, coming early to the concert could work as well.”

After yet more thanks, he added, “Feuilly mentioned that you didn’t have a phone plan, but Bossuet said that you were on the GroupMe for their physics class,” and seriously, when did these people find so much time to talk about her? She knew it hadn’t been rehearsal—they rehearsed Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and it was a Tuesday. “Would you be alright with joining the ABC GroupMe? I should warn you, it’s about as chatty as you might expect. And we’re able to set our own names, which can be…abused. I tend to mute it more often than not.”

Almost twenty minutes after the initial message, he had sent a follow-up: “Also, I noticed that you use an iPhone as well. My iMessage account is charles.theophile@msn.com, if you would like to communicate that way.”

\--                                                                                                                                                         

It turned out there were a handful of ABC GroupMe’s. Most of them made sense, like a separate officers’ GroupMe. Éponine ended up on the overall GroupMe and the one specifically for everyone besides Grantaire and Enjolras to talk about Grantaire and Enjolras.

Which, she supposed, also made sense.

\--

Combeferre had not exaggerated. Jehan added her to the GroupMe’s on Wednesday morning. By Wednesday evening, she had the following messages:

 **Courfy:** _I know I don’t usually like songs by dudes but I make an exception for this man_

 **Courfy:** _He is so hot he makes dragons want to retire_

 **Courfy:** _I want this song to be my lifestyle_

 **R:** _you want retro brass sections to follow you around everywhere?_

 **Courfy:** _Well_

 **Courfy:** _Duh_

 **Courfy:** _But_ _I also want to wake up every morning and think “I gotta kiss myself I’m so petty”_

 **Eagle:** _*pretty_

 **R:** _See, if I’D said that I’d never hear the end of it; YOU get a fix_

 **Eagle:** _Well, one of you is petty_

 **R:** _*pretty_

_\--_

**BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _I want dragons to retire in the wake of my hotness_

 **Eagle:** _What do you have against employment for dragons?_

 **Courfy:** _i want random passerby to reply to everything I say with “hot damn”_

 **R:** _Hot damn!_

 **Courfy:** _…oh no_

 **R:** _Hot damn!_

 **Eagle:** _You brought that upon yourself_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _petition for “I’m too hot, hot damn” to replace “royals, royals”_

 **Jolllllllllllllllllllllllly:** _Royals is eternal_

 **R:** _Because we’ll never be ROYALS_

 **Courfy:** _ROYALS_

 **R:** _Hot damn!_

 **Courfy:** _What have I unleashed_

 **R:** _Hot damn!_

_\--_

**Jolllllllllllllllllllllllly:** _I want to look good in a pink blazer_

 **Jolllllllllllllllllllllllly:** _and aviator sunglasses_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _I’m telling you, friend, it’s all in the attitude_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _I’ll take you shopping ANY TIME_

 **R:** _Everything you wear costs two hundred dollars; I can buy him aviator sunglasses from a dollar store_

**\--**

**Jehan:** _feuilly says he wants to invoke the perfect blend of modern rap and hip-hop with old-school r &b, jazz and big band_

 **Jehan:** _With just the right amount of funk, of course._

 **Enjolras:** _What._

 **Marius:** _Is it safe to tell him about Uptown Funk?_

 **Eagle:** _Well, now that you’ve gone and said it…_

 **Marius:** _Sorry!!!! :(_

**\--**

She realized it wasn’t its actual purpose, but she decided that messaging the GroupMe reserved for discussion of Enjolras and Grantaire was the best way to ask:

 **Not Ophelia:** _Why must Enjolras be protected against Bruno Mars?_

 **Courfy:** _It’s more that he must be protected against problematic music._

 **Combeferre:** _His interest in music is limited to its merit as a political and social weapon, leaving his knowledge of modern music fairly narrow. He’s pleased when celebrities use their fame to make progressive political statements, and when something particularly problematic occurs, well. We try not to expose him to anything that will upset him too much._

 **Eagle:** _Courf mostly listens to jazz + blues and Combeferre mostly just likes live music, so their house is surprisingly well-insulated._

 **Jehan:** _Well, he’s heard more songs than he actually knows; we do live on a college campus._

 **Eagle:** _Yeah, it’s safe as long as he doesn’t look the thing up._

 **Courfy:** _You should have seen the week he learned about Mylie Cyrus’s appropriation and objectification of black female bodies._

 **Jehan:** _*Miley_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _Why do you even know that?_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _More importantly, who told Enjolras about her?_

 **Eagle:** _It was completely R’s fault_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _yeah, i don’t know what answwer i was expecting_

 **Not Ophelia:** _I don’t think I want to know this story._

**\--**

**Enjolras:** _I’ve watched the video and I understand Feuilly’s admiration for the blend of modern and vintage musical styles, but I don’t understand how one would call the police and “a fireman.”_

 **R:** _You might be the hottest man alive, but you’re only one man, and they’ve got pretty big hoses._

 **Enjolras:** _But you don’t just call one fireman. You call the fire department, and they send a certain number of firemen. Usually at least two, so the first has backup._

 **Courfy:** _Enj._

 **Courfy:** _Baby._

 **Eagle:** _Sweetie._

 **Courfy:** _Muffin-cheeks._

 **Eagle:** _Butter cake._

 **R:** _Apple pie._

 **R:** _Toaster strudel_

 **R:** _Pork chop_

 **Eagle:** _You are applying LOGIC_

 **Courfy:** _When you should be applying FUNK_

 **R:** _Hot damn!_

No one mentioned that Grantaire had given Courfeyrac a brief “hot damn” reprieve in favor of calling Enjolras a pork chop.

\--                     

Coming to rehearsal on Thursday turned out to be a useless gesture, because they couldn’t get any of the mics to correspond to the knobs. Most of the wires were tucked out of sight and zip-tied together, which was probably a wise choice in a lecture hall, but which left them with no ability to actually tell what was going wrong. “You just have to reverse-engineer a system from scratch based on the effects of the buttons,” explained Feuilly, which might have been a more useful explanation if the buttons were having any effect at all.

Despite Feuilly’s best efforts and Éponine sending several texts to Gavroche (who knew more about machines than she, the mechanical engineering major, did), she ended up spending most of rehearsal just watching them sing. Enjolras, who was quiet in social situations, had clear charge of everyone in the room.

Not that it stopped Grantaire from shouting “hot damn!” to everything Courfeyrac said. When Courfeyrac finished running through his rousing solo on Only The Good Die Young, Bossuet joined in the shout.

She watched all of rehearsal, mostly focusing on Marius but getting distracted by the others on occasion, especially when Combeferre sang Mykonos again. “I guess I wasn’t that helpful,” she acknowledged when rehearsal was over.

“It’s not your fault,” Feuilly sighed. “I’m convinced Musain Hall is haunted.’

\--

The GroupMe also answered her unspoken, lingering question about why Marius had stopped asking FaceBook for company; he started asking the GroupMe instead. On Friday night, Courfeyrac, Grantaire, and Bossuet took Marius to a party in the hopes of finding “the mystery girl.” Bossuet invited Joly, but he pointed out that dancing was “not a handicap-accessible sport,” to which Grantaire exulted, “more Bossuet for me!” and he and Bossuet spent the following twelve minutes describing all the dancing they planned to do with wording that quickly descended from innuendo-laden to outright filthy.

She imagined Joly reading the messages, giggles growing increasingly more helpless and high-pitched. She imagined Marius’s blush and Combeferre’s fond eye-rolling. She had never actually seen Combeferre roll his eyes, but it was easy to imagine.

Éponine lay on her bed and staring at the ceiling.

She didn’t think of herself as lonely, exactly. She spent time with people every day, at this point—Joly, Bossuet, Grantaire (and briefly Feuilly) on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday; Jehan and Marius on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; often the full ABC for a Saturday concert. There was a jockish guy Mandarin class who made an entertaining conversation partner and tended to sit next to her at the weekly language table. Sometimes she and Marius had brunch on the weekends, though nowadays he usually had it with Bossuet.

Aside from post-class lunches and Mandarin language table, she had most of her meals alone. She hadn’t had a friend to spend her Friday nights with since Marius joined the ABC.

She rolled over in bed, picked up her phone, and asked:

 **Not Ophelia:** _Who wants to go on a roof with me?_

 **Jehan:** _That sounds fun! I’ll bring Combeferre._

 **Grantaire:** _Oh, go on the a+a building! It’s a really easy one, even if you’ve got wee legs (TALKING TO YOU THERE, HOMBRE) and if the campus security guards see you, you can just be like “I wanted to see a different angle” in a really airy-fairy voice (Jehan should probs handle that one) and they’ll be like “fucking art kids” and let you off with a warning. Nophelia might want to wear shoes, though. PANTS, EVEN. :O_

 **Not Ophelia:** _But think of the tyranny!_

 **Marius:** _R just started choking and Bossuet won’t stop laughing???? I feel like I’m missing something_

\--

Éponine didn’t own any pants that fit, and the leggings she had started wearing under her skirts as the weather grew cool featured large rips in the crotch area, so she went with a flowing brown skirt that would be easy to hitch up. As it turned out, climbing onto the roof of the Art and Architecture building was no trouble, especially with Grantaire’s detailed instructions (at least when they ignored bits like _you should probably just pick Hombre up and throw him across for this part.)_

The air was even colder on the roof. Jehan and Combeferre cuddled against each other while she tried not to feel left out. The boys were effortlessly affectionate; even Marius was learning to relax, not initiating any contact that she had seen but accepting Courfeyrac’s enthusiastic hugs and Enjoras’s hand on his shoulder.

No one ever touched Éponine.

This was silly, she thought, hugging herself. She was here to feel less lonely, not more.

“Whose idea was it to have parents weekend in November, anyway?” she asked the cloudy sky. “Thanksgiving is in less than a month. They’ll have no time to miss you.”

“The ABC is calling it family weekend,” said Jehan, which was not an answer.

“Thank you again for running sound,” Combeferre added. “It’s a tremendous help.”

“Sure, if the sound system works and if Courfeyrac and Bahorel and R sing into their mics.” Combeferre also wasn’t excellent at singing into the mic, but the stand was too tall for him and wrestling the mic from its stand had proved an exercise in embarrassment, so she forgave him. Courfeyrac and R kept dancing around; Bahorel stomped and jumped and headbanged and at one point played air guitar with the mic stand. And that had just been for rehearsal. “I’m surprised Joly doesn’t bounce, but then his song was pretty sad.” She said it deliberately, thinking back to Jehan’s sadness at someone’s request. Joly’s aching ballad about struggling with whether or not he should remain with someone he loved seemed like a good contender.

Jehan made a mournful little sound.

“Do you arrange all the songs?”

“Oh no,” he replied quickly. “I do most of them, but I’m not even that good. Combeferre’s are the best.”

“My arrangements have the most textural complexity, but they’re challenging to sing and I produce them slowly,” clarified Combeferre, precise and  placid, neither self-effacing nor bragging. “Jehan’s are  more pleasing for the audience. Grantaire’s actually have the most creative flair, but he doesn’t produce with any sort of regularity.”

“He was saying he would produce another song for like, two months before he arranged Icarus, and he arranged Only the Good Die Young last year _at_ Billy Joel karaoke night. He soloed on it before Courf did.”

Now that she thought about it, _we ain’t too pretty, we ain’t too proud, we might be laughing a bit too loud, aww, but that never hurt no one_ did sound a lot more like Grantaire than like Courfeyrac. And she could see what Combeferre meant about creative flair; both songs had fascinating background parts and especially arresting beginnings, the vocals at the beginning of Only the Good Die Young doing a remarkable job of capturing the enthusiastic piano-playing of the original. Icarus was Grantaire’s solo, and she had never heard the real song, but the throaty crescendo of hums into “wo-o-oahs” in the beginning nearly rocked the room. “I can see why R wants to sing Icarus, but doesn’t Courfeyrac object to a song about pressuring a girl into losing her virginity to him?”

“He’d probably say you’re missing the point,” said Combeferre fondly.

“Of course he would.” She decided against asking whether Grantaire’s arrangements were always about dying young. Instead, she asked, “Billy Joel karaoke night?”

“We have nights where everyone just sings to an artist or theme; they’re great for arrangement ideas. The Billy Joel one inspired me to write a parody of We Didn’t Start the Fire using human rights violations around the world, but it’s hard to make that one scan.” His expression shifted to the one he wore when lost in poetic contemplations. Éponine had seen that look enough at lunch to know that this was the last Jehan would say out loud for a while.

“It would be lovely if you came to the next one,” Combeferre told her, warm and eager. “It’s quite entertaining. Jehan’s rendition of Piano Man was wonderful.” His mouth twisted into a small, wry, half-disapproving smile. “And I’m sure Courfeyrac and Bossuet would be delighted to reenact Enjolras and Grantaire’s rendition of She’s Always a Woman.”

The idea of Enjolras and Grantaire passively-aggressively trading lines like _she’ll ask for the truth but she’ll never believe you_ made her laugh so hard that she was tempted to roll onto Combeferre’s shoulder. She rolled onto her back instead, laughing at the stars.

\--

She insisted on Jehan walking her home, which Combeferre looked mildly disappointed by but didn’t object to. “I know what you’re going to ask,” Jehan sighed as soon as Combeferre was out of earshot.

“I get that you respect their privacy and all, but it’s not like I’m not hearing the songs and seeing the angst, so you may as well tell me what’s going on with Joly and Bossuet. Otherwise, I’m going to ask Bossuet or R about it, and--”

“Don’t do that,” said Jehan immediately, in a tone that suggested he was willing to argue the point if he had to. “And I don’t actually know what’s going on. Joly only seems to be talking to R about it, and I don’t know Bossuet very well. Joly and Feuilly and I are really close because we all joined together as freshman. Bossuet joined the same year, but he mostly hung out with the older ones. But the thing about Family Weekend is that it isn’t a concert for a cause, so we all just solo on a song that means something to us. And,” he sighed, shoulders slumping and face turning sad again, “and that day you saw me sad, it was because Bossuet asked me to arrange something that would say he isn’t mad at Joly for cheating on him.”

“Shit,” Éponine breathed, and Jehan nodded vigorously.

\--

She waited until Saturday morning, when the campus was full of parents, to answer Musichetta’s friend request. To her irritation, Musichetta was online, and messaged her right away.

“Hey girl. You’re their physics friend, right? Boss had some great things to say about you.”

It should have made her feel warm. She liked Bossuet, who laughed in the face of his many misfortunes, did random kind deeds for strangers, and brimmed with gleeful sarcasm. Now she just stared at the message for a long, frosty moment before asking, “What do you think of Joly and Bossuet?”

The reply pinged almost immediately. “Oh, they’re the cutest. Spent last night talking books with Joly, actually.”

 _Bitch._ "Angling for a threesome?” she typed innocently.

“Oh, good, I _was_ being obvious. I keep getting mixed messages. Question: have R or the flirty Galinda (I think he had one of the C names?) tapped that? I wouldn’t mind some advice, but R seemed kind of weird around me and I didn’t talk to flirty Galinda much.”

“Go to hell,” Éponine told the computer screen out loud, and slammed the power button until it turned off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delayed update! I'm in a different country than usual for a job interview and I left my computer charger back home, so apologies for any typos or weird formatting.
> 
> Joly's solo is "Should I Stay" by Gabrielle (and yes, I decided everyone's solo and what their performance is like, because I am a dork, but I'm not sure if I should inflict all the details on my readers who aren't as music-obsessed as I am.)
> 
> Aaron Tveit singing "She's Always a Woman" is another thing you should Youtube, though it won't be plot-relevant until later.


	10. Family Weekend Concert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In lieu of quoting something, I encourage the readers who are interested in the musical details of the fic to look up the songs in this chapter, because they were all chosen for a reason. (I imagine Feuilly singing the Arabic version of Red and Black, which makes no sense in-universe, but hey, if Victor Hugo still wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame...) To those less interested in the musical details, well, you probably weren't reading the opening lyrics anyway. :D

**November part 2**

 

Éponine fantasized about her family coming to Family Weekend. She imagined convincing them that there were plenty of parents with money or connections. Networking was, in fact, one of the only things her parents had asked about in their rare emails. She imagined taking Azelma to the dining halls to try the mushroom ravioli and tres leches. She imagined Gavroche singlehandedly rewiring the Musain sound system, charming the entire ABC, and pranking some of her haughtier suitemates until they cried.

Sometimes, the face of the beautiful young Asian girl leapt into her mind, interrupting her fantasies, and Éponine had to shake herself out of her thoughts. There were some things she wasn’t ready to imagine just yet.

Of course, she knew fantasies were just fantasies. What did happen was that Gavroche sent suggestion after suggestion on the sound system, until finally the eleventh or twelfth made the mics respond. For some reason, the dials for two of the mics were switched, but that was an easy change to make. One of the mics didn’t work, so the beatboxer had to go without, but the beatboxer never really needed one.

Instead of their usual t-shirts or the all-male-group typical suit-and-tails, the ABC wore red and black in varying degrees of formality. The pins on their chests matched the rings of red, white, and blue on the group t-shirts. Éponine dressed to match, in a long red skirt and low-cut black top. She thought about snagging one of the pins Feuilly was planning to sell at the door, convinced no one would ask her to pay, but her top had gotten very tight, so she just focused on the sound. She made herself a table of information during the final rehearsal, and ticked it off throughout the real performance.

\--

_1\. Only the Good Die Young – Billy Joel (arr. R)  
Solo – Courfeyrac, whose volume I can’t even try to guess because he keeps dancing instead of using the damn mic_

Courfeyrac performed his solo exactly as he had rehearsed it; unsurprising, since he behaved as if he always had a devoted audience. His star power was, however, harder to laugh at when an entire audience was seduced by it.

He still didn’t sing into the microphone, though.

\--

 _2\. Mykonos – Fleet Foxes (arr. Combeferre)_  
_Solo: Combeferre_  
_Special part: Enjolras, turn knob slightly below average_

She almost regretted that Mykonos came so early, because it meant she couldn’t spend the rest of the concert looking forward to it. Combeferre’s voice was smooth and clear and enchanting over the complex layers of the shoe—always light, never showing off, but (to her admittedly untrained ear) flawless in technique. If she turned his dial up a bit louder than strictly necessary, no one needed to know.

\--

 _3\. Cheating – John Newman (arr. Jehan)_  
_Solo: Bossuet, average volume_  
_Special parts: Courf and Marius, who don’t sing into the mic, turn Marius’s up HIGH_

Bossuet’s song was almost absurdly upbeat, given that it could basically be summed up as, “you’re cheating on me, but I love you, so just do your thing.” She could almost believe it was just a song he was singing because it was fun, but she heard the conviction in, _“but if your heart is beating, bring it home, baby to me.”_

She felt a streak of vicious, protective satisfaction in the fact that Joly’s solo came immediately after Bossuet’s. Though she realized, if Grantaire had made the setlist, he had probably chosen that order out of kindness.

_4\. Should I Stay – Gabrielle (arr. Jehan)  
Solo: Joly, who is not going to be loud on this one_

She was used to thinking of Joly as the boppity one, so she was woefully unprepared for his shuddering solo. He nearly whispered the words, _“where do I stand? I just don’t know”_ and then his voice rose as he asked, _“then again, am I being honest? Being truthful to myself? Can I see my life without you, can I be with someone else?”_

Éponine ended up having to change the mic settings three times, and suspected it would have been more if the shoe part hadn’t been soft and stripped-down. It was probably a good thing for her, since at least half the audience shed at least a few tears as he sang, _“should I stay, should I go? Could I ever really stand to let you go? Could you not find the right words to say,”_ and here his voice trembled and she turned up the mic again, saving herself from feeling too much, _“that maybe I’m getting in your way?”_

She couldn't even tell if this _"you"_ he had grown attached to, who might or might want him in their life, was meant to be Bossuet or Musichetta. Either way, she wasn't happy about it.

Bossuet, to her relief, wasn’t crying. Jehan, however, was.

 _5\. Long Black Road – ELO (arr. Jehan)_  
_Solo: Bahorel, who is fucking loud and won’t sing into the mic anyway, so don’t even bother_  
_Special part: R, who also won’t sing into the mic_

Joly and Jehan introduced Bahorel as one of their two new members: their first non-undergraduate, their first non-male, and their first bass. They managed to put Bahorel’s tendency to fight with everything that moved and most things that didn’t in euphemistic terms, focusing instead on their smile and their fantastic fashion advice. Somehow neither of them managed to sniffle, in spite of having spent most of the previous song with tears in their eyes.

Bahorel bounded onto stage, roaring, _“they used to tell me kid you ain’t goin’ nowhere!” (“DA NA NA-NA NA NA,”_ boomed the shoe) _“with your cheap guitar and your big long hair!”_ It was undoubtedly the most energetic performance, getting all the audience to stamp their feet and clap along

Bahorel also swung the mic stand around and tugged free one of the wires with their own foot-stamping. Putting their performance just before intermission had been a good call.

\--

As Éponine prodded at the mics, she skimmed the faces in the audience. She recognized Enjolras’s parents right away: tall, beautiful, blue-eyed. They had familiar faces. Maybe they had been on magazine covers. Grantaire smiled lopsidedly when he saw her staring at them. “Yes, his mom is in fact a senator.”

“Oh.”

“Are you joining the orphans tonight?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I thought Feuilly was the only orphan.” She didn’t exactly know the story; something about idealistic white people who hadn’t thought about the implications of adopting a baby refugee.

“Sure, but my dad hates me and my mom doesn’t care, Hombre and his mom like to forget each other’s existence—he won’t be hanging with the orphans, though, because the Enjolri and the Courfeyracs have basically adopted him—Eagle’s parents aren’t going to come to freaking America, and…I don’t actually know the deal with Duckling, but I think his grandfather’s here?”

“So…the orphan table is Tuesday Thursday lunch, minus Joly.”

“Ah, but lunch doesn’t involve _alcohol.”_

She knew for a fact that Grantaire had brought alcohol to lunch on more than one occasion, but it sounded better than being alone in her dorm. She opened her mouth to answer, but saw Grantaire’s gaze shift away from her. “Sorry,” he said softly, already stepping away, “something I need to do.”

She didn’t need to watch him to know he was following a shaking Joly out of the concert hall, but she watched anyway.

\--

_6\. probably Arabic? (arr. Jehan+F)  
Solo: Feuilly, who actually understands sound systems, so just set it to average and let the master do his thing_

The ABC had one non-English language song at most of their concerts, certainly most of their long ones, but none quite had the glory of Feuilly’s belting ode to…freedom or home or whatever it was Feuilly sang about.

Joly and Grantaire were missing, but in the wake of Feuilly’s flaming conviction, it wasn’t much of a loss.

\--

_7\. Say It’s Possible – Naomi somethingoranother (arr. Jehan)  
Solo: Jehan, who is VERY QUIET and mic-shy_

Joly and Grantaire snuck back in between Feuilly and Jehan’s song, Joly looking ill and Grantaire with his lips pressed into a firm line. Jehan looked ready to cry from relief at their return, or maybe from something else.

Say It’s Possible was a standard in their repertoire; it was in more concerts than it wasn’t. It never sounded quite right for a capella to Éponine. It was the sort of song a broke teenager soloed on in front of a computer camera, playing on a guitar they had taught themselves. But it was a good song for the ABC, technically about global warming but suitable to any sort of cause, or really anything that the soloist didn’t want to give up on.

Jehan didn’t like to solo, preferring to arrange songs and give the spotlight to his friends. It was silly, Éponine thought, because he had a lovely voice, earnest and full of wonder. He stood blushing in his ill-fitting black tunic and bright red pants as he crooned about hope and beauty and pleaded with the audience to _“tell me that you won’t let go,”_ and Éponine liked to think everyone in the audience was as charmed by him as she was.

\--

 _8\. Icarus, Bastille (arr. R)_  
_Solo: Grantaire, set sound high because he doesn’t sing into the fucking microphone_  
_Special parts: Joly, average volume should be fine for this one_

Grantaire rarely soloed, probably because he kept changing lyrics in ways the rest of the ABC didn’t intend the lyrics to be changed, and he clearly hadn’t taken any of his rehearsals seriously, so Éponine jerked in shock when he stepped toward the mic and half-sang half-snarled, _“look who’s digging their own grave, that is what they all say, you’ll drink yourself to death.”_

Enjolras, without pausing in conducting, caught her eye when she jerked. He smiled a pleased, almost smug smile and nodded, a silent _that’s right_ that no one in the audience could possibly have noticed, because Grantaire was _vibrant._ His rough baritone dipped and soared effortlessly through vocal acrobatics, the passion and ache and _want_ so audible Éponine shuddered with it.

Instead of singing what Youtube had informed her was the actual bridge of the song, something about putting up armor when leaving, Joly stepped forward, and he and Grantaire chorused, _“but if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing’s changed at all? And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before? How am I gonna be an optimist about this? How am I gonna be an optimist about this?”_

Éponine wasn’t usually impressed by mash-ups, at least in theory, but this one worked, either because of the arrangement or because of the clear emotion on the part of Joly and Grantaire—one who was desperately paddling to maintain cheer, one who had given up a long time ago.

When the song ended, she found herself a little angry. She had realized Grantaire was a good singer, obviously; even his drunken song parodies revealed that much. But if he was capable of sounding like _that,_ why didn’t he bother?

It occurred to her that this must be how the musical director of a group containing Grantaire would feel all the time.

\--

 _9\. Use Somebody, some dude (arr. Jehan)_  
_Solo: Marius, who sings like a mouse_

Bossuet and Courfeyrac eagerly introduced Marius, getting into a brief argument about who liked him more. Courfeyrac won, mostly by telling Bossuet to shut up ("hot damn!" said Grantaire.) Though she couldn’t tell from her vantage point in the back of the concert hall, Éponine imagined Señor Tomás de Courfeyrac II looked scandalized.

As they did, Éponine turned Marius's volume to the highest setting so she could spend the song ignoring reality (which she fully recognized she was doing, but it helped anyway) and pretending Marius was singing to her. When the beautiful girl’s face invaded her mind again, Éponine hunched low, hiding her expression behind the sound board.

\--

 _Many Moons, Janelle Monae (arr. Combeferre)_  
_Soloist – Enjolras, turn to slightly below average volume, turn down for belting_  
_Special parts – Combeferre, Feuilly_

Éponine snorted at this, because Many Moons was their closing song at every concert, and of _course_ Enjolras’s response to “songs not about causes” would be to take the closing song.

At least he knew how to use a microphone, when to hold it to his lips and how far to pull back when he belted. And it was hard to resist dancing along to their closing song, an exultant demand for freedom that broke into a rapid-fire rap which they always altered to fit the cause for the evening. Their choreography, enthusiastically performed by everyone except Enjolras and a cane-clutching Joly (though Joly did what he could), looked much better on stage. She wished they would do choreography more often. After the song faded into a tender entreaty to come with him, the audience sat silent for a moment, caught in the shared trance created by his voice.

\--

Jehan's mom was the first to cheer. The sound had barely left her mouth before the applause drowned it out.

As the audience clapped and stomped and hollered, Éponine sat back with fierce vindication burning in her chest. This wasn’t just a group of silly boys (and Bahorel) who she had tagged along with because she had a crush on one and classes with a handful of others. They were _spectacular._

The hot swell of pride withered like a flame doused in water when she saw a trembling Joly lead Bossuet out of the concert hall. After accepting smiles and thanks from Combeferre and a red-eyed Feuilly, she found Grantaire slumped against the wall, looking tired and not at all gleeful about his mind-blowing performance. He crooked a smile at her anyway. “Sounded like you appeased the ghosts who run the sound system. Did you have to sacrifice any goats?”

“Is Joly about to break up with Bossuet?”

He dropped his head against the wall with a thud and sighed at the ceiling. “He thinks he’s doing right by him.”

“He’s not.”

Grantaire didn’t point out that he knew them and Éponine didn’t. She knew enough to know that she was right. She lay her head against the wall as well, wondering what Marius thought about this. He liked Bossuet. But he was also hopelessly oblivious about other people’s feelings.

It only took a few minutes for Bossuet to join them. His eyes were red, but he smiled when he saw Éponine. “Joining orphans night?”

“That depends, can your over-21-ness and R’s weird charm get some alcohol in my underage stomach?”

“Alcohol sounds amazing,” he sighed. “Feuilly doesn’t drink, but Enj and Hombre are probably taking him out to dinner anyway.” He picked at a thread on his old, faded black jacket.

Grantaire leaned in Bossuet’s direction and asked quietly, but not so quietly that Éponine couldn’t hear, “do you need a place to crash?”

Bossuet glanced at Éponine.

“She figured it out already.”

“Smart.” He smiled weakly at Éponine, then told Grantaire, “Joly’s having dinner with his parents, so I’ll get my stuff from his and stay in Courf’s spare room for a while.”

“Wait, you were _living_ with your boyfriend?” Éponine asked. That was just asking for trouble.

Bossuet smiled a tired shadow of his self-deprecating smile. “I don’t live anywhere. I lost the housing draw big-time, and by the time they told me, all the off-campus housing was booked or out of my price range. Everyone’s nice about letting me crash, but I mostly stayed with Joly.” Joly’s voice sounded inadequate without the excited trill of extra l’s.

“Well, if you ever do need a place,” Grantaire began.

“Joly needs to be able to call his best friend at two in the morning without worrying that his ex is in the room. Also, your place always smells like beer.”

She envied that easy selflessness. She wished she could be easily selfless, or easily selfish, which one didn’t matter; she just wished it wouldn’t be so _hard._ “I can’t believe he,” Éponine began, but Bossuet cut her off with a shake of his head.

“Please don’t. He’s the best I’ve ever had, best I’ve even _imagined_ having, and we’re going to stay friends, so. I’m lucky, really.” He smiled again, closer to convincing but not quite there. “Text me where we’re drinking, yeah?”

“Course.” Grantaire’s voice went deliberately light, even as his shoulders drew up defensively. “I hope you don’t think this means you’re getting rid of me.”

Bossuet snorted. “With my luck? I expect to be stuck with you forever.”

If he saw how quickly Grantaire’s shoulders dropped back to their normal height, he was kind enough not to comment. In a rare display of tact, Grantaire waited until Bossuet was gone to slam the back of his head against the wall. “The world is fucking stupid,” he told the ceiling.

“I’ll drink to that,” Éponine replied.


	11. not the perfect match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long! If you want more of R's reaction to the break-up, check out the second chapter of the Enjolras-POV companion fic "you come crashing in."
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter contains frank, book-canon-compliant discussion of suicidal ideation

_I feel your warmth, got me wanting more._  
_You've left the door half open,_  
_I'm in two minds to explore._  
_Then again, am I being honest?_  
_Being truthful to myself?_  
_Can I see my life without you,_  
_could I be with someone else?_  
_It seems I've grown attached_  
_though we're not the perfect match._  
_I just can't explain_

       --  _"Should I Stay,"_ Gabrielle

 

**November part 3**

They ate at the Chinese restaurant again, which it turned out was called the Corinthe, because the two women who worked there never checked IDs. They both glared at Éponine when she brought food from the dining hall, but there was no way she was paying for dinner when her scholarship gave her a buffet.

Éponine knew Grantaire was drunk enough when he switched from glaring into the beer bottles that covered the table, grumbling about ageism and greasy noodles and idiot boys who had the world but still wanted more, to remarking, “I have to change their Avenger names.”

“What?”

“You know, Captain America, Black Widow, Nick  _Ferre_ y.”

“It is terrifying that I know exactly who you’re referring to. Though I think Courfeyrac is more like Clint.”

Grantaire considered. “I like it! But then we need a Black Widow.”

“I can’t be Black Widow?”

“You’re Maria Hill.”

She considered. Éponine’s knowledge of Marvel was vast but scattered, borne of reading one or two comic books at a time in the bookstore and illegally streaming the Marvel movies to watch with Gavroche. She liked Maria Hill in the films. She vaguely recalled her being evil in the comics, but that wasn't bad, either. “I feel like for you clowns I’m more like Pepper Potts.”

“Nope. My friend Flo is my Pepper Potts. You should meet her, she’s awesome, though she wastes all her awesome on ugly future Wall Street assholes. Not that I mind ugly people,” he jokingly waved a hand across his own face, “but seriously, they are assholes. Do you think Jehan would be a good Black Widow?”

Éponine’s response was to laugh so hard she nearly slipped off her seat. It occurred to her that she might have had a bit too much to drink. But hey, he was paying.

“I had been calling Santa Dr. Banner and Eagle The Incredible Hulk and now that’s just not going to fly. Santa could be Jane? That’s the scientist dating Thor, and Bahorel is Thor--”

“Well, gee, I could have told you that.”

“So I guess that makes Musichetta Betty Ross.” He frowned at his beer bottle and reached for another one.

Éponine frowned. “Don’t you mean Darcy?”

Grantaire blinked at her.

“Who’s Marius?” Éponine asked.

“Robin.”

She was trying to remember why that sounded wrong when Bossuet limped to the table. He glanced at the spread of oily, mostly-uneaten food and scattered, mostly-empty beer bottles and sat next to Éponine.

“You’re walking funny!” Grantaire declared.

“Dropped my suitcase on my foot on the way to Courf’s. But I want to talk about anything but myself and my lack of love life.”

“We could talk about Marius and his Marie?”

“Marie?” repeated Eponine. She knew, of course, exactly who Grantaire was talking about ( _I’m the_ only _one who knows who he’s talking about,_  she mused resentfully), but she couldn’t help flashing to him having just called her Maria Hill.

Grantaire waved a hand. “Marion, Maribelle, Mariette.”

“Getting pretty ethno-centric with those names,” Bossuet remarked as he found a mostly-full bottle and poured the beer into Grantaire’s unused glass.

_“Maritza.”_

Éponine glared at her paper container. Some of the oil from the calamari at dinner still clung to the bottom. She knew she had been spending too much time with the ABC when her mind paused its turmoil to remark that paper containers were bad for the environment, but at least it was better than styrofoam.

Grantaire leaned over and sympathetically patted the air near her hand. “Éponine is a better name anyway,” he assured her. “Because it starts with E.”

Éponine stared at him.

Bossuet groaned. “This is why Joly’s always there when we take him drinking,” he informed Éponine, pausing to take a gulp of beer. “He just tells the Lotes when to stop giving R more.”

“I clearly had more beer than I thought, because I could have sworn you just said  _the Lotes.”_

“I thought we weren’t talking about your lack of love...lost...li...hey, that alliterivates!”

“Yes, that’s exactly the word you’re looking for,” Bossuet said. “Tell us more about Enjolras.”

“Oh, Enjolras,” Grantaire sighed happily. “Have you ever noticed how his eyelids are kind of reddish? And his lower lip is all thick and disdainful. It wasn’t too disdainful tonight! He told me I performed well and my arrangements were good. Of course, it came with a heavy dose of ‘now if you would just apply yourself more,’ but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

Bossuet lifted his glass. “To taking what we can get.”

The three of them clicked their drinks together.

\--

She woke up on Sunday with “Should I Stay” playing in her head, which was just unfair. There were plenty of songs at the concert that she would rather have stuck in her head. Long Black Road had been fun.

There was no pset session that day because Joly was having brunch with his parents and Bossuet with the Courfeyracs and Enjolrases ( _Enjolri?_  asked Grantaire.  _Enjolrasses?)_  Grantaire didn’t offer a reason for his absence, which either meant that he was lying on a floor somewhere, having brunch with “The Jolly Ranchers" (which he insisted upon calling Joly's family even though their last name was Lee), or just wasn’t interested in working on a problem set with Éponine if his boys weren’t involved.

She managed the problem set fine on her own, but it wasn’t as much fun.

\--

For a group of cartoonishly progressive, primarily queer radical college students, the ABC were surprisingly inclined towards religion. Enjolras and Grantaire were both firm atheists, though Enjolras had been raised Protestant and Grantaire Jewish. Courfeyrac was Catholic, Bahorel a blend of Catholicism and their tribal religion, Marius Methodist, Jehan Buddhist, Feuilly Muslim, Combeferre somewhere between Hindu and an unnamed secular spirituality. Joly chose not to think about religion because thinking about souls and afterlives frightened him, while Bossuet took a "we can't know, so why stress about it?" stance on it all.

Éponine did not believe in God per se, but she did believe in an invisible hand balancing the scales. She sent a silent thanks to that hand when the loss of pset session was rewarded with Bossuet texting the Physics GroupMe,  _Marius invites us orphans to dinner with his grandpa._

His grandfather was a stern-looking, white-haired man who shared Marius’s attractive mouth and regal nostrils. He took them to a restaurant so expensive that Grantaire was convinced Bossuet would break the chairs just by sitting in them (indeed, by the end of the night, Bossuet had broken a plate and two glasses.) They looked out of place, Eponine with her tight clothes and ragged hair, Bossuet with his ancient coat that had a hole in the elbow, Grantaire with his general air of Grantaire-ness. The portions were too small, but he let them order as much as they wanted, and they took shameless advantage of that.

As Éponine, Grantaire, and Bossuet gorged and Marius picked nervously at his food, his grandfather asked questions, looking over them like auction pieces he hadn’t decided whether to bid on yet.

Éponine finally learned the story of why Bossuet and Grantaire kept joking about Bossuet never graduating: he was a Political Science major who (due to a combination of unlucky circumstances involving schedule overlaps, classes being moved or canceled, a delayed train leading him to miss a registration day, and probably more that Grantaire and Bossuet didn’t have the chance to amusedly recollect) wouldn’t be able to finish his graduation requirements for at least an extra semester, more likely two. She didn’t learn anything about Grantaire, at least not anything verifiable, because he was clearly taking the questions about as seriously as he took everything else.

Marius was mostly silent except to interject praise of his friends--R’s assorted talents and knowledge of the best place to find everything, Bossuet’s sense of humor and unrelenting generosity to complete strangers. Éponine treasured the two things he said about her: “Éponine’s a mechanical engineering major, she’s  _brilliant,”_  and “Éponine was my first friend in school!” At the last one, they shared a silent grin. It made her think of Joly and Bossuet, which was heartwarming for all of four seconds before she remembered that Joly and Bossuet were no longer a couple she longed to emulate.

The shared grin warmed her anyway.

After dinner, Éponine and Marius walked his grandfather to a cab. “Sorry about him,” Marius sighed.

Éponine smiled reassuringly. “He bought me dinner, I can’t complain. What’s wrong?”

It was the easiest thing in the world to tell when Marius was sad. He looked like he had the weight of the world on him, slumping his shoulders and making his mouth and eyelids droop. When he answered, “nothing,” she lightly touched his arm. He didn’t start, as he used to when she touched him. Courfeyrac had been a good influence, she noted bitterly.

“I won’t force you to tell me if you don’t want to,” she reassured, “but let me help.”

Marius looked at her like he would be fond if he had the energy. “Could I come to your room for a while?” he said at last, voice little more than a gust of air. “My suitemates all still have their parents over, and I don’t want to be around people right now.”

She took it as a compliment that she was distinct from the broad category of  _people._  Someone he could feel comfortable around. She felt as if she were floating as they returned to her room, though whatever was weighing him down kept her cheer from flying too high.

When they entered her room, Marius immediately stretched out on the floor, facedown.

Éponine wondered when her floor had become the resting ground for sad ABC boys. But as far as needs went, that was an easy one to fulfill. She stretched out beside him, on her side so she could look at his hair.

Without lifting his head much, Marius mumbled, “Do you ever wish you were dead?”

Éponine’s instinctive response was,  _sure, who hasn’t?_  Then she remembered Marius’s best friend was Courfeyrac, who probably loved every moment of life. So instead, she answered, “A few years ago, we were homeless.” Marius jerked, but said nothing, which she appreciated. She didn’t want pity.

Her time with the ABC had made her aware that people became homeless because of race, class, abuse; that countless Palestinians had been evicted and watched their homes razed to the ground; that mentally ill prisoners were tossed into the street rather than being rehabilitated. Her parents? Had bought a house they couldn’t afford.

“We lived under some bridges.” She thought about cuddling with her sister to keep from freezing to death. She wished she could cuddle against Marius. The ABC formed frequent dogpiles. Maybe he would let her.

She hugged herself instead. “I would look at the water and think about drowning myself, but then I’d think, it’s too cold. Isn’t that funny?” It seemed less funny now that she wasn’t giddy and hallucinating from hunger, but it had struck her as hilarious at the time. Joly and Bossuet would have been proud.

Marius was looking at her now. He didn’t appear to see the humor.

“Why do you ask?”

“My parents don’t want me.”

Éponine had assumed there was something wrong with his family, just based on the fact that he never talked about them. Tidbits about the rest of the ABC’s families came up in conversation. Enjolras and Jehan were rich only children. Bahorel was fiercely proud of their parents, who lived in poverty on a reservation, and tried very hard to make them proud of Bahorel as well. Grantaire dearly loved his sister. Only Combeferre and Marius never mentioned family. “They’re clearly idiots.”

He gave her a tiny, grateful smile that looked as if it took effort before closing his eyes. “And my grandfather wants me to be someone I’m not, and I never had a really close friend before Courfeyrac.”

Éponine was suddenly very glad he couldn’t see her face.

“And it’s not that I ever specifically wanted to die, but I never really felt alive. And then I saw her,” and of course, of  _course_  it would come down to this girl, “and I  _did_  feel that way, I felt like I could have a family and a future and love,” as if he didn’t have love already, “and now I don’t know who she is or how to find her, and it’s not that I really want to die. I just don’t know how I can live.”

He looked at her again, mouth bracketed with pain, eyes dark with hurt. He had a beautiful smile, Éponine thought. She wanted to see it again.

\--

If she had been a better person, she would have told him right then. Instead she let him lie on her floor a while longer, then walked him partway back to his room before going to the computer lab.

Courfeyrac had posted pictures on Facebook on Friday night, of the dance he and Grantaire and Bossuet had taken Marius to. Courfeyrac’s pictures weren’t as good as Jehan’s; they had probably been taken on his phone, most were blurry, and there were several that were nearly duplicates of one another. His captions were the best part, filled with giddy comments like, “meet Marius’s new suit, with Marius inside! Doesn’t he look stupid?”

Neither of them looked stupid. They looked like a couple on their first date, Courfeyrac proud and affectionate, Marius radiating anxiety and hope. Courfeyrac was touching Marius in all the pictures, holding hands or linking arms or throwing an arm around his waist. There were pictures of Grantaire and Bossuet as well, which Éponine tried to distract herself with. Her favorite was one with Grantaire hugging him from behind, one hand splayed across his bald spot, Bossuet laughing as he tried to push him off. Her second favorite, which would have won if it hadn’t been so blurry, was taken as they danced, Grantaire dipping Bossuet almost to the floor. From a mobile device, Joly had commented, “please don’t drop him!!!!”

She took a moment to wonder why Joly was commenting on Facebook pictures of his boyfriend dancing with his best friend if he had been on a date with another woman at the time, but it was hard to distract herself with Joly and Bossuet when her eyes kept focusing on Marius’s face.  _This is how he looks when he thinks he might find her,_  she thought.  _This is how much he cares about this girl, whose name he doesn’t even know._

She left the computer lab and walked around the building once before returning. As she walked, she softly sang,  _"here I am, waiting for a sign"_ into the cold night air.  _"Where do I stand? I just don't know."_ The song was pretty, but it didn't fit her situation, Éponine thought as she walked back into the computer lab. 

She knew exactly where she stood.

\--

Finding the information was harder than she expected it to be. The peer counseling service was anonymous, and the name Éponine remembered from a lifetime ago yielded no useful results on either the school Facebook or the actual Facebook website. When Éponine finally found what she was looking for, she closed her eyes for several minutes, at once wishing she hadn’t found it and glad that she would be the one to tell Marius.

She hoped it would make him smile.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Eponine [is better than Cosette] because her name starts with an E" is an actual Twitter quote from George Bladgen, tagged #RlikesE, because he is a wonderful and evil man who simultaneously loves us and wants to make our brains explode.
> 
> Les Amis as Avengers, according to Grantaire:
> 
> Enjolras: Captain America  
> Grantaire: Iron Man  
> Combeferre: Nick Fury + Coulson  
> Courfeyrac: Hawkeye [was Black Widow before Ep's suggestion]  
> Bahorel: Thor  
> Joly: Dr. Banner  
> Bossuet: The Incredible Hulk  
> Jehan: Black Widow [was Squirrel Girl before Ep's suggestion]  
> Feuilly: The Falcon [was Hawkeye before Ep's suggestion]  
> Marius: Robin (yes, Grantaire knows Robin is DC)  
> Eponine: Maria Hill  
> Floreal: Pepper Potts


	12. can't stop your heart from hanging on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been brought to my attention that a video exists on Youtube of my facecast for Bossuet soloing on an a capella arrangement of Cheating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opAO4i5sodI&spfreload=10 (obviously the group in question is not all-male and the fabulous duet accompanying him is not Marius and Courfeyrac, but you should watch it anyway.)
> 
> Also, if you are not already reading / subscribed to the Enjolras-POV companion fic “you come crashing in,” you should be, because they run parallel.

_We’re dancing free but we’re stuck here underground_  
_And everybody trying to figure their way out._  
_Hey, hey, hey, hey, all we ever wanted to say_  
_Was chased, erased, and then thrown away,_  
_And day to day we live in a daze._  
_We march all around until the sun goes down_  
_Broken dreams, no sunshine, endless crimes_  
_We long for freedom. You’re free but in your mind,_  
_Your freedom’s in a bind._

 _\-- "Many Moons,"_ Janelle Monáe

 

**November Part 4**

After all his moping about not being able to find the girl, Marius took his time in approaching her. And by “took his time,” Éponine meant, “walked into her dorm’s dining hall, saw Cosette at a table, and hid in the plate-return section.”

“Really?” Éponine demanded.

“What if…” he fell silent with a stricken look. For a moment, Éponine thought he was going to say something reasonable, like, _what if this complete stranger isn’t the answer to all my dreams?_ Instead, he had to say the least reasonable thing possible: “What if she doesn’t feel the same about me?”

Éponine shook her head in disbelief. “You’re kind. You’re handsome. You speak every language—”

“Only six languages,” he mumbled, blushing brightly and staring at the floor. The worst part was that he was serious.

“Don’t make me get Courfeyrac or Bossuet,” she threatened. Marius’s eyes widened in horror. Ushered by Éponine, he half-skittered half-walked to Cosette, who smiled brightly at him. She had a lovely smile, even if it was silly to wear a blue silk dress with white lace trim in a dining hall.

“I, I,” he stammered.

“Say hello,” Éponine hissed.

“I!” he said brightly.

“Hi,” the girl answered.

“Yes! That!” Marius agreed eagerly. He was lucky Éponine was in love with him; anyone else he knew would have recorded this. “I wanted to…to…” he waved a helpless arm.

“Tell me how beautiful I am?” she suggested.

“So beautiful! Like the song of a lark, and so—your eyes! Beautiful. Your eyes are beautiful.”

All of Cosette’s friends were laughing at this point, but she just smiled at him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Marius admitted.

“You sounded as if you were about to ask me out.”

Though she stood behind him, Éponine could imagine his face light up. “I’d love to.”

Éponine didn’t blame Cosette for laughing, but she also saw the girl’s eyes soften, and she couldn’t blame her for that either. Cosette sat and smiled expectantly. Marius said nothing. Probably smiling back.

“Well?” Cosette asked.

“What?” Marius asked, confirming Éponine’s suspicion that he had just been grinning at her.

“You were going to ask me something?”

“Oh! Oh, I haven’t—your name! Mine is Marius. Pontmercy.”

“I’m Cosette. Anything else?”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“You could ask me for coffee.”

“I know a wonderful coffee place!”

Cosette smiled indulgently.

Éponine couldn’t watch this. She turned and left the dining hall, trusting that Cosette would eventually coax the words ‘would you like to have coffee with me?’ out of him.

***

At the beginning of Chemistry on Wednesday, Marius grabbed her arms like he was going to spin her around, and squeezed them gratefully. “Oh, ’Ponine. You’re wonderful.”

Her delight lasted until the end of Chemistry, when Marius said he was having lunch with Cosette instead of them. Jehan, bless his overlarge heart, asked her which dining hall she wanted to eat in like nothing had changed. She forced a smile that made her teeth hurt and said, “actually, I think I should be studying right now.”

***

She walked into the Physics lecture hall on Thursday to find Grantaire hovering uncomfortably near the door. It didn’t take her long to realize why. Joly hadn’t been at Physics on Tuesday because he had been sick. Today, he and Bossuet were both in class, but sitting separately.

“I want to stab things,” she sighed, in lieu of saying hello.

“They always used to come in together,” said Grantaire, “given that Boss basically lived at Santa’s place. I take Santa, you take Boss?”

Éponine hesitated. She liked Bossuet better than she did Joly—he was funny and resourceful and kind of an ass, in a good way, while Joly was a radiant ball of sunshine that she couldn’t really relate to. _And_ Bossuet hadn’t cheated on anyone. “Dividing by who likes who better seems like a good way to make this arrangement permanent.”

“You think it won’t be?” he asked. “‘Let’s stay friends’ are famous last words, and B’Eagle just put up with me for Santa’s sake anyway.”

“Experimenting with new nicknames?” she asked. Grantaire shrugged, and strode off in Joly’s direction.

Éponine remembered a class when Grantaire had entered with an expression heavy with grief and slumped into the seat next to her. “Enjolras hates me,” he had muttered.

“No he doesn’t,” chided Bossuet. “If he hated you, he just wouldn’t bother with you.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire had grumbled. “That’s why I’m as useless as Duckling in love.”

“I thought that was an incredibly rude thing to say about Marius,” Bossuet had joked with a tug of Grantaire’s hair. He pulled Grantaire’s head to rest on his shoulder. Grantaire, hunched and sullen, had offered no resistance. Bossuet ran his fingers through the messy curls. Misinterpreting Éponine’s questioning look, he’d shrugged and explained, “it seems to help Joly.”

Grantaire stuck a thumb up and kept his head against Bossuet’s shoulder. “I didn’t need love to make me useless,” he’d mumbled. “Love’s the only thing that makes me feel like a person.”

At the time, her mind had been frozen on the mention of Marius, the idea that his infatuation was making him as melancholic and aimless as Grantaire. Now, she remembered Bossuet’s gentle hum, his hand absently but steadily stroking for the entire lecture.

Grantaire, Éponine thought as she walked to Bossuet’s seat, wasn’t good at reading how people felt about him.

***

Marius didn’t eat lunch with them on Friday, either. He did, however, come to the ABC potluck dinner. Éponine sat near him, but he paid little attention to her.

Not that he was alone in that. He and Courfeyrac were frantically dancing around trying to make Bossuet happy while Enjolras provided silent moral support; Grantaire and Bahorel were frantically dancing around trying to make Joly happy while Feuilly and Jehan provided soft-voiced moral support. Combeferre was the only one who paid attention to Éponine, apart from a random tangent Grantaire pulled them all into, where the group debated what would happen if Team E and Team R fought to the death. Then Joly, Bahorel, and Bossuet (who, Éponine noticed and Grantaire probably didn’t, had declared himself Team R _even when_ Courfeyrac tried to convince him otherwise) paid plenty of attention to her declaring herself Team R.

She did think it was a little sad that Team R only consisted of the four of them, while Team E had everyone else, including Grantaire.

***

She had known it would be difficult to see Marius in love with someone who wasn’t her. What she hadn’t factored in was not seeing Marius at all.

Well, that was a slight exaggeration. He still sat with them in Chemistry, before rushing off to have lunch with his new girlfriend.

For a week, Éponine avoided the ABC. Jehan’s kind, silent but sympathetic awareness made her feel transparent. Bossuet’s stubborn cheer in the face of losing someone who had been a bigger part of his life than Marius ever would be for hers made her feel pathetic. Grantaire’s cynicism, alcoholism, and palpable unhappiness made her afraid that she would turn into him. And Joly just made her want to punch him in the chest, because he had thrown away a beautiful relationship in favor of his freshman crush.

It was easy. She muted the GroupMe and sat between other people in Physics. Jehan told her that the lunch offer was always open, but that he wouldn’t keep asking. Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire were distracted navigating the breakup. The group had been the closest she had to a social life, and they probably didn’t even notice she was avoiding them.

Éponine, meanwhile, didn’t sleep for four days. All night, she walked and ran and sang sad songs (sometimes she tried to sing songs that made her happy, like _Many Moons,_ but she always just ended up murmuring, _“you just can't stop your heart from hanging on”_ to herself, which wasn’t especially cheering) and then lay in bed rubbing her arms and wondering when she had gotten so weak. She had lost so much more than this and handled it so much better. What had she lost this time? Nothing that she had ever really had in the first place.

***

She strongly considered missing their next concert. She decided to go not because she wanted to see them, but because the only thing that gave her energy anymore was listening to _Many Moons._ Éponine had spent one evening alone in the dorm, her suite off at a movie or a party or a restaurant (she didn’t keep track anymore) and singing, _“I keep my feet on solid ground, and use my wings when storms come around”_ into her hairbrush. As long as she turned the song off before it hit the soft end, or skipped past the lyric that saddened her straight to _“who put your life in the danger zone?”,_ it was fine.

The ending wouldn’t make her sad with the ABC, because during the soft portion, the boys messed up each other’s hair before everyone but Joly dipped and popped up for the line, _“you wanna drop it like a rolling stone.”_ Sometimes (usually) Grantaire threw in an actual roll.

Besides, she could just stay near the back.

\--

She showed up late, but the concert hadn’t started yet. “Ok, ’Ponine’s here!” Bossuet called. As if they had been waiting for her.

For forty-five minutes, she felt something besides tired and pathetic and _hungry._ The only part of the show that made her stomach clench was Marius singing “Use Somebody” again. This time, there was no question that he was singing to Cosette, who stood in front wearing a fluffy pink dress and a dazzling smile.

Most of the set, in fact, was a repeat of the Family Weekend concert. Grantaire sang Long Black Road, which didn’t work as well as Bahorel singing it: Grantaire’s voice was objectively more beautiful, but the song was about _oomph,_ not beauty. Bahorel, on the other hand, sang _Many Moons,_ which sounded great. White boys really shouldn’t sing _Many Moons,_ Éponine thought, even phenomenally talented white boys.

She wondered if it was a bad sign that she had opinions on which soloists should sing which song. She also wondered if it was a bad sign that she recognized every change from the Family Weekend Concert: Bossuet and Feuilly dueted on _The Boxer._ Instead of the non-English song being Feuilly’s Arabic one, it was Jehan singing a sweet ballad in an East or Southeast Asian language. Joly was gone, probably sick. Enjolras sang _Mykonos,_ which irritated her even though he sounded perfect as always. Combeferre didn’t solo, which she liked even less. No one sang _Cheating_ or _Should I Stay,_ which was a relief. Other than that, it matched their Family Weekend set.

They parted ways after the concert. Marius fluttered off somewhere with Cosette. Bahorel, Grantaire, and Bossuet went off to play cards and get drunk. Jehan and Combeferre went to a play together. Courfeyrac had a date. Feuilly and Enjolras had homework, because clearly weekends were a foreign concept to them. Éponine walked home alone, but at least she fell asleep that night.

\--

Her avoidance of the non-musical portions of the ABC lasted until the day before most of campus evacuated for Thanksgiving break. Combeferre sent her a message, impeccably polite as usual: he hoped she had been well, he hadn’t seen her in a while (that particular pleasantry made her snort; how often did he usually see her, anyway?), and he would be delighted if she came to an event they were having the night before break.

“It isn’t a concert or anything. It’s just a custom we have before breaks. We pick an artist or theme and everyone comes up with a song. I mentioned it to you a couple weeks back?”

Courfeyrac had already invited her to the closed Facebook event, but a personal message felt more important. Besides, the dining halls closed for Thanksgiving, and the Triumvirate House always had food.

She immediately regretted the decision when she saw Marius curled up at the base of one of the couches, his arms around Cosette. But she had already opened the door, and she refused to be a coward. She _refused._

Combeferre favored her with one of his small, fond smiles. “I’m happy you came.”

“I have a theme idea!” Courfeyrac declared.

"Hot damn!" Grantaire supplied.

Courfeyrac dutifully ignored him. “So lately, there’s been a resurgence in songs about women reclaiming the stupid stereotype that women are dangerously in love. You’ve got Blank Space by Taylor Swift, Walk Away by Dia Frampton—”

“Who?” Bossuet asked.

“Look it up. But all these songs that are like, I will love you until it’s scary.”

“Oh!” said Cosette. “Like Black Widow by Ig—”

 _“No!”_ half the room shouted in unison. Cosette blinked, startled, but she didn’t sink into Marius’s arms and cry, so she was clearly handling the situation better than Marius, who looked horrified at all of them.

Enjolras, who had not been one of the people who shouted, lifted his eyebrows.

“It’s by Rita Oro!” said Courfeyrac. “Black Widow by Rita Oro, you don’t need to listen to it. I recommend Hot Right Now, also by Rita Oro.”

“We don’t mention the I-word in front of our leader,” Éponine informed Cosette, quashing her cold glee. Maybe Cosette had Marius, but she clearly wasn’t integrated into the ABC the way Éponine—was? Had been? Was it already past tense when it had barely been two weeks?

Grantaire raised his wine bottle as if he were raising his hand. “How about, instead of singing about scary women in scary love, we just sing Taylor Swift songs?”

Courfeyrac considered this. “Do I still get to sing Blank Space?”

“Aww, and here I was hoping Feuilly would sing Blank Space,” said Grantaire cheerfully.

“I don’t understand the joke, but I’m sure you deserve this,” replied Feuilly serenely, sticking his middle finger in the air.

“I don’t know any songs by Taylor Swift,” said Enjolras, earning him a shocked look from Cosette. “Pick something for me.”

Bossuet and Grantaire attempted to rock-paper-scissors for the honor, but after Grantaire tried to use ‘dynamite’ twice and ‘llama’ once, he threw up his hand and his wine bottle in surrender and said, “I’m trusting you to make this good.”

“Have I ever let you down?” asked Bossuet sweetly.

Grantaire answered by downing the remainder of his bottle and crawling to the table for another one.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was an AWFUL chapter because I have a lot going on right now, and also I lost my writing notebook and had to recreate the chapter from memory (which always works out worse than writing it in the first place), so...apologies. Hopefully the next update will be both faster and better.


	13. already flying through the free fall

_Tell myself it's time now, gotta let go_  
_But moving on from him is impossible_  
_When I still see it all in my head_  
_in burning red._  
_Losing him was blue like I'd never known_  
_Missing him was dark gray all alone_  
_Forgetting him was like_  
_trying to know somebody you've never met._  
_But loving him was red, burning red._

       --  _"Red,"_ Taylor Swift

 

**November Part 5**

Courfeyrac did, in fact, sing _Blank Space,_ with all the strutting and eyelash-fluttering and dramatically insane expressions she would have expected from him. Even Éponine had to join the "hot damn" chorus that followed his performance.

Before sitting down, he clarified, “I would like to make it clear that I am opposed to the use of ‘insane’ as an insult.”

Bahorel stood up next. “What Courf said, but with ‘crazy,’” they informed the room, before bursting into a booming rendition of “Picture to Burn.” Éponine, who listened to far more Taylor Swift than she had ever been proud of, was patently unsurprised when they changed the line _“so go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy—that’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay”_ with _“you’re straight.”_

“Changing the lyric doesn’t make it less offensive,” Enjolras pointed out, having already looked and and rejected the song as a possibility for him to sing.

“Yeah, but it makes it more fun,” they retorted.

Cosette startled Éponine by asking, “is it okay if I sing something?”

“Of course,” Enjolras told her. “We’re all welcome to sing.”

“That means you, Nophelia,” Grantaire warned. Éponine flipped him off. She was the third person to do so that evening.

Predictably, Cosette sang _Mine._ She had a high, sweet voice. Too much vibrato, thought Éponine bitterly, wanting to look away from Marius’s smitten face but not being able to.

Marius looked like he was about to stand to sing next, but Combeferre stood and Marius quickly sat back. Combeferre sang a lovely, delicate rendition of _Tim McGraw._ Éponine felt split in three: enjoying the simple beauty of his voice, yearning for someone who would think of dancing with her when listening to her favorite song, and taking a spike of vindictive pleasure from the sound of Joly softly sobbing from his part of the circle. Everyone was too polite to react to the crying, though Jehan did pat him gently on the arm.

The pleasure lasted until Bossuet stood up and sang _Style._ She might have taken it as just him singing a song he enjoyed—heaven knew he worked the line, _“I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt,”_ the boy had clearly been influenced by Courfeyrac or Bahorel or both. But she couldn’t miss his voice crack on, _“I said I heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl – some other girl.”_ For the last three words, his voice almost faded into nothing.

Because the world was unfair, Joly didn’t cry when he sang that, though he did get very twitchy about the overall narrative of two exes caught in a cycle, and he closed his eyes very tightly with every refrain of, _“we never go out of style.”_ Grantaire, meanwhile, scowled deeply while wiping the back of his mouth with his sleeve. She didn’t understand any of these boys.

The mood of the room brightened significantly when Jehan sang _Mean,_ a cheerful ditty lambasting a bully _._ “Fuck right you will!” shouted Bahorel when Jehan sang, _“someday I’ll be living in a big old city.”_

Éponine cheered when Jehan finished. Bahorel, Feuilly, Joly, Combeferre, and (to her moderate surprise) Enjolras joined her. It didn’t surprise her that skinny, bright-eyed Jehan with his shy smile and terrible clothes and tendency to get incredibly excited about everything from credit laws to constellations would be the target of bullying. But she didn’t need to be surprised by something to be pissed about it.

“The thing about that song,” said Grantaire, who was by now massively drunk, “is that she’s singing things like ‘you’re so mean!’ and ‘you can’t lead me down that road,’ but also it’s a _fucking nasty song._ You’re drunk! You’re a pathetic liar! You’re alone in life! Like seriously, self-righteousness works better when you aren’t as bad as whoever you’re pissed at.”

“It’s just karaoke night, R,” Bossuet said. “Let it go.”

Grantaire started humming _Let It Go,_ which probably wasn’t the response Bossuet was looking for, but it worked well enough.

The group sing-along of _Shake it Off_ was, by far, the highlight of the night. Éponine found herself breathless with her own laughter. For that, if nothing else, coming was worth it.

She told herself as much, anyway.

Joly somehow made it through _All Too Well_ without crying, though he closed his eyes for the first _“here we are again”_ and kept them closed through the final, _“I remember it a-a-all, a-a-all, a-a-all,”_ and seriously, Taylor Swift had been a terrible idea. It didn’t make Éponine less angry at him – so you fondly remember the boyfriend _you cheated on,_ that doesn’t change what you did, and for that matter, where do you get off _singing about it in front of him and a group of his friends?_ (The fact that Bossuet had, apparently, started it did not make her less angry.)

It was hard not to feel sympathy anyway, though.

When Joly sat back down, Grantaire turned to Bossuet and demanded, “well? Have you picked something for the chief or what?”

“He has,” Enjolras replied, and stood in the center of the room. He sang “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together,” reading the lyrics off his phone and somehow maintaining a straight face while half the room struggled to retain giggles. Courfeyrac muffled his laughter against Combeferre’s back, which was both ineffective and impractical given how far forward he had to lean to get his head that low.

When he had finished, he frowned at the phone. “I don’t see the appeal of Taylor Swift.”

“That’s because you didn’t sing that with any _feeling,_ Chief. It’s obvious when you care about what you’re singing and when you don’t.”

Enjolras scoffed at Grantaire. “You’re one to talk! You don’t feel anything for music.”

Grantaire looked at him for a long moment. He kept looking as he took a long swig of his bottle. Then, without bothering to stand up, much less stand in the center of the circle, he held the bottle like a microphone and sang, _“Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street. Faster than the wind, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly.”_

Enjolras returned to the circle. Grantaire didn’t look away from him, nor did he stop singing. _“Loving him is like trying to change your mind once you’re already flying to the free fall. Like the colors of autumn so bright, just before they lose it all.”_

The lyrics, especially the lyrics about losing and missing and not being able to let go, struck Éponine more deeply than a drunken love song to someone who didn’t even realize what he was listening to had any right to. She was already breathless with pain before the song ended and Marius, turning to Cosette, said without a trace of irony, “that’s how I feel about you.”

Any conflicted feelings she had had towards Grantaire melted into fondness when his response was to Marius’s statement was to slap himself on the forehead.

And then, because the night wasn’t painful enough, Marius stood up and sang, _Love Story,_ because he was a stupid romantic and because, apparently, Cosette’s dad didn’t like him very much.

Éponine managed to sit through most of the song before she stood up and left. No one tried to stop her.

\--

Grantaire found her wandering the freshman courtyard, singing _Teardrops on My Guitar._ “If you laugh at me, I’ll cut your throat,” she warned.

He lifted two hands in a conciliatory manner. Well, one hand and a beer bottle. Seriously, did the ABC have separate funds earmarked, “for R’s alcoholism?” “I’m not here to laugh, I’m just here to see if you felt like wallowing together.”

“What, wallowing with Joly isn’t good enough for you?”

“Joly doesn’t understand the benefit of a good wallow.”

She thought about it. “Got any cigarettes?”

He offered her one, and she took several long sucks before she said, “if we’re wallowing, I’m doing it somewhere warm.”

\--

They went back to Grantaire’s room. The stench of sweat and beer wasn’t as bothersome when she had a cigarette in her hand.

Grantaire tugged an oversized guitar from under his bed. “Feel like finishing?”

She snorted. “I am _not_ going to serenade you with Teardrops on My Guitar. I have dignity.”

“What’s dignity? Does it taste good?”

In response, Éponine blew a stream of smoke in his face. “Unless you sing—what’s the cheesiest song boys usually sing?”

Because he did not in fact have dignity, Grantaire immediately started strumming at his guitar and singing _Hallelujah._ Unfortunately, his voice was so beautiful that it didn’t feel like a joke. It felt like him setting both their hearts on a platter and decorating it with belting.

He couldn’t sing the line _“all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.”_ He closed his mouth, set the guitar down, and sighed. “You win, Nophelia. No Teardrops for you.”

Éponine approvingly lit a second cigarette. Grantaire blinked. “Damn, didn’t realize I was blackout yet. I don’t remember giving you that.”

She had, in fact, stolen it as he sang, her sleight-of-hand a little diminished by months without practice but aided by his drunkenness. But letting him think he was drunker than he was sounded like a good idea to her. She sat against the wall and tried to blow smoke rings. She had never figured out how to do that. “I’m surprised you didn’t go with _You Belong With Me.”_

Grantaire snorted. “No, see, that song assumes you’re a better match than the other person. Besides, I’m not sure if the abstract concept of liberty wears short skirts.”

“Liberty’s a classy broad,” she agreed.

“Don’t get me wrong, she does dance naked among soldiers, so she probably isn’t concerned with like, covering herself up.”

That was probably a reference to something. Éponine took another long draw of the cigarette. “Speaking of karaoke night turning into ‘sing about our feelings night,’ did _Style_ mean what I think it meant?”

“If you think it means Boss owns a tight skirt, I can neither confirm nor deny.”

She snorted and ended up coughing harshly. Grantaire plucked the cigarette from her fingers, because he was secretly a nice person. Then he started smoking it himself, because he was un-secretly a complete asshole. She resolved to steal more once she was done coughing.

“I _mean,”_ she choked out once her throat had settled down, “did they seriously have a post-break-up hook-up already? It’s been, what, two weeks?”

“I hold my friends’ privacy in the utmost…something pretentious-sounding.” Grantaire, of course, blew excellent smoke rings. “But _if,_ and I mean this purely hypothetically, _if_ they were to act on the fact that they’re meant to be, then one might hypothesize that it wouldn’t get further than some making out before _someone_ had an anxiety attack about _taking advantage of the situation_ and _someone else_ decided to go hook up with Couch instead.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“So now Courf’s kissed everyone in the ABC except you and Joly?”

Grantaire blew another smoke ring. “Dude gets around. It’s not an actual thing, though. They’d kill each other about as fast as. Well. Probably not _as_ fast as if Boss and me were together, but. Pretty fast.”

“Did Joly really break up with Bossuet over Musichetta?”

The cigarette dropped out of Grantaire’s mouth. Éponine snatched it. “Who told you that?” Grantaire demanded.

“That’s a yes.”

Grantaire sighed and dropped his head against the wall. “I’ve only heard Joly’s take on it, and I love the kid but he kind of creates mountains out of, of, _clouds._ But if the story’s what I think it is, then Baldy’s a fucking moron.” The bitterness that crept into his voice made Éponine furious.

“It’s not _his_ fault that—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” He sighed again and took a gulp of beer while Éponine smoked. “People can’t decide who they love,” Grantaire said after a moment.

“They can decide what to do about it,” Éponine replied stubbornly.

“Look, I’m not a fan of Santa’s choice either, but I stick with my friends whether I agree with them or not. That’s kind of what distinguishes friends from, from,” he finished his beer in lieu of finishing the sentence, then flopped to a horizontal position.

 _Bossuet is your friend, too,_ she thought, humming to herself.

Grantaire laughed when he recognized the tune. "Mykonos, right? I like that one too."

She shrugged. "Songs about brothers. I've got a thing for them."

Grantaire leapt into a sit so fast Éponine was the one who dropped the cigarette this time. "Brothers!" he shouted.

"What."

He snatched one of the dozens of pieces of paper lying on the floor and started scratching something onto it. "Nophelia, you're brilliant."

"Sure. Why?"

He waved the pencil in her direction. "He sounds great no matter what, but you can always tell whether he's just robotting through the song or when he actually  _feels_ it."

"And your point is..."

"What's the one kind of love he has that's about people, not freedom?"

"Are you drunk or high?" she demanded, but he was already at work, scribbling and humming to himself. She rolled her eyes and stood up. When she stole his entire pack of cigarettes, he didn't even look up. 

But she unmuted the GroupMe after that.

\--

Campus largely emptied out during Thanksgiving. Her suitemates all went home or on trips. The ABC all went home to their parents, except Grantaire (who went to his sisters’ place), Combeferre (who went to Enjolras’s place), Marius (who went to Cosette’s, which made Éponine’s teeth gnash in spite of herself), Feuilly (who stayed on campus), and Bahorel (who stayed on campus.)

 **R:** _So I get that Wonderkid is basically homeless. What’s your excuse?_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _What exactly do you think Turkey and Genocide day looks like on a reservation?_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _We’re so thankful they ate our food and then they FUCKING MURDERED ALL OF US!_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _But seriously, Ep and F, if you two want to eat my food and bitch about white men with me, hit me up._

 **Feuilly:** _Wouldn’t you buying us food just be a sad imitation of the entire cycle?_

 **R:** _Well, are you planning to give Buttercup smallpox?_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _My money comes from a scholarship founded by some dead rich white dude so when you think about it we’re spending the white man’s money._

Bitching about white men sounded like a great idea to Éponine.

\--

Bossuet showed up when they were halfway done eating, dripping wet from the rain and holding a drenched duffel bag.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Canada?” Feuilly asked. He and Éponine were both spending most of break working, so he and Éponine were both stuffing themselves on Bahorel’s generosity.

Bossuet laughed, rain dripping into his mouth as he did. “Train delayed, missed my flight. They said they’d reschedule or reimburse me, and then they said, never mind, it wasn't our fault, so we won't do jack shit. ’Course, I’d already slept overnight at the airport by then.” He sounded extremely cheerful about all of it.

“How’d your folks take it?” asked Feuilly.

Bossuet laughed again and showed them the texts. _No serious injuries?_ His mom had asked. _Alright then, have fun!_ “She’s used to it,” he explained with a self-deprecating grin.

\--

“If R were here, this would be the part where he bullies us into watching Supernatural,” Bossuet remarked when the food was done and they were all happily laid out, exhausted with fullness.

“I liked the first episode?” Bahorel offered.

Bossuet lit up. “Wait, the traditional Ojibwe religion is Midewiwin, right?”

“That isn’t even slightly how that’s pronounced.”

“Yeah but. If you want to bitch about white people and native culture, we _have_ to watch Wendigo.”

The episode was terrible, but it was worth it when Bahorel bellowed, _“that is not how wendigos work! Goodnight!”_ and hurled Bossuet’s wet shoe at the television.

Their ire lasted well past the end of the episode. “Anasazi protection symbols,” they grumbled. “That’s not even the right part of the continent.”

“Fucking Yankees,” said Bossuet cheerfully.

“Yeah, because Canada’s got a _great_ track record of indigenous rights.”

“Don’t look at me.” Bossuet raised his hands in the air. “My ancestors went to Canada to flee slavery; the native genocide stuff had mostly happened already.”

“We could bitch about nonwhite men, too,” Feuilly offered. “If you want to talk about. You know.”

“Well, R’s white, so I assume you’re talking about Courfeyrac?” he asked pleasantly.

Bahorel nudged Bossuet with his foot. “The breakup, dude.”

“I have nothing to bitch about,” said Bossuet firmly.

“Seriously?” Éponine burst out. “He _cheats on you,_ and you have nothing to say.”

Bahorel and Feuilly stared at her in shock. Bossuet didn’t. “I didn’t know you knew about that,” he said sadly.

“What the fuck,” Bahorel said.

“Look, I’m really not interested in starting any conflicts, so if we could all just not spread that story.”

“You don’t owe it to him to protect him from what he did,” Éponine complained.

“He’s still my friend,” Bossuet retorted. “You barely even know him, he’s the nicest—” he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t want a conflict with you, either. Look, I’m going to put my stuff back in Courf’s place. Anyone up for lunch tomorrow?”

They agreeably switched to debating where to go for lunch, a debate that concluded with Bossuet texting Grantaire for suggestions and then leaving. As soon as the door was closed, Bahorel repeated, “what the _fuck.”_

“Were Jehan and I seriously the only two who knew about this?” Éponine asked. “He sang a freaking song about it.”

“We’re an a capella group,” Feuilly pointed out. “We sing things. And Joly…I’ve known him for two years, I can’t _imagine…”_ he trailed off sadly.

“It has to be bullshit,” Bahorel insisted. “Like, I know it’s shitty to say, oh, I’m sure this person I like didn’t do this awful thing. But _Santa cheating on Eagle?_ Bull. Shit.”

“You are spending too much time with R lately,” Feuilly pointed out.

Éponine said nothing. She knew that loving people couldn’t stop them from being terrible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaron Tveit has in fact sung "We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together" and George Bladgen has in fact sung "Hallelujah," and I highly recommend Youtubing both.


	14. just gonna dance all night

_Somebody said you got a new friend_  
_Does she love you better than I can?_  
_There's a big black sky over my town_  
_I know where you're at, I bet she's around_ _  
_

       --  _"Dancing On My Own,"_ Robyn

 

**December Part 1**

Losing Marius, who had never been hers in the first place, continued to hurt more than made sense. Éponine imagined herself talking to him about it, not about the fact that she missed him specifically, just about her loneliness _._ About her longing, as if it wasn't about him. It was all just imagining, of course. She wouldn't tell him anything. They had never even been confidantes, not really.

But talking to the rest of the ABC again helped. Jehan was a nice person to have lunch with, enthusiastic about everything and never asking questions she didn't want to answer. Joly and Bossuet might not be sitting together in class anymore, but they were all still eating lunch together. If Bossuet's revelation had changed Feuilly's view of Joly, he didn't show it.

During the day, Éponine attended class and did her homework and listened to Jehan and laughed at Bossuet and tried not to glare at Joly too hard. Lying in bed at night, she wondered if this was how she had always been; cold and lonely and hungry for more than food, able to ignore it only through hard work and the company of her siblings and now her friends. Grantaire was making more and more sense.

\--

On the first Tuesday of December, Bossuet received a text message during lunch. "Mother _fucker."_

"Aw, did Courfeyrac break up with you?" asked Grantaire, who was stage-one drunk even though it was _lunchtime on a Tuesday._

Joly visibly flinched. "R, think about your jokes before you make them," Feuilly suggested, rubbing Joly on the arm.

Bossuet scowled at Grantaire. "I'm not dating Courf, and look." He shoved the phone in Grantaire's direction.

Grantaire took far longer to read it than made any sense for a text message, then he pushed it back at Bossuet. "Well. Good luck with that." Then he stood up and walked back into the buffet section. Éponine raised an eyebrow at Bossuet, who shrugged.

She followed Grantaire to the buffet section. "Are you being a bigger asshole than usual, or did I lose my hard-won immunity over break?" Break and the week and a half of avoiding the ABC, but none of them had noticed, so she wasn't going to mention it.

"Does the name Cabuc mean anything to you?"

Éponine's excellent memory also applied to conversations. "Something about sexually harassing the audience," she said, because reciting the conversation verbatim would give away skills he didn't need to know she had.

"Yeah, well, apparently he's moved from harassment to assault, and the school's doing jack shit. We, of course, are protesting that. Red," he had started calling Enjolras Red after the Taylor Swift nights, and unlike the other nicknames, this one seemed like it would stick, "asked Baldy to join the triumvirate in talking to someone-or-another."

"And this is a problem because...?"

"Because _I'm_ the fucking assistant pitch!" he said loudly enough that several of the students acquiring food glanced at him. "He could have asked me, but he just figured I'd be, be drunk or something--"

"Should I point out the obvious, or would that be unnecessary?"

Grantaire huffed. "I joined the same year the triumvirate did, you know. Baldy joined the same year as the sophomores, _and_ he isn't an officer, and Red still just...he pretends he's an officer instead of me, because everyone, _everyone,_ would rather have him."

For the first three months that Éponine had known him, she had watched Grantaire cheerfully circulate in Joly and Bossuet's orbit without ever showing a hint of jealousy, a trace of feeling out-of-place. Now, his resentment was so palpable she imagined it as a visible force radiating off him, making the air taste as bitter as her breath after a night of too many cigarettes. The bursts of viciousness Grantaire showed towards Bossuet when he was the wrong kind of drunk, which Éponine had always found bizarre given that (whether Grantaire thought so or not) they were such close friends, clicked into place.

Jealousy was another thing Éponine understood just fine. "Let's sit back down," she said, and Grantaire listened.

"I'm not going," Bossuet said when they sat back down.

"What?" Grantaire asked.

"I'm not going. They can manage."

Grantaire sulked in a visible mixture of shame, gratitude, and lingering resentment for the rest of lunch.

\--

 **R:** _THURSDAY SWING NIGHT MY BIRTHDAY EVERYONE COME_

 **Jolllly:** _I don't think you can swing dance with a cane_

 **Jolllly:** _BUT I'LL COME WATCH._

 **R:** _You can be the boppity moral support!_

 **Enjolras:** _Are you actually going to show up this time?_

 **R:** _Now, Red, have I ever let you down?_

 **R:** _Don't answer that._

 **R:** _BUT SERIOUSLY EVERYONE COME._

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _Seriously, you two need to stop using the GroupMe to flirt_.

 **Courfycat:** _YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS._

 **Courfycat:** _Yas to dancing I mean flirt on you two crazy diamonds don't let Buttercup get you down_

 **Enjolras:** _I don’t flirt._

 **Enjolras:** _I might be late. But I’ll come._

\--

For lunch on Grantaire's birthday, he took the usual Thursday lunch group and his friend Flo to a restaurant that sold paper-thin pizza with dozens of toppings and the best milkshakes Éponine had ever had.

Joly plucked off his toppings, ate them individually, then nibbled manically at the bare pieces while muttering about grease and dairy and deliciousness in the same breath. Bossuet dropped pizza on his shirt twice and gave himself a brain freeze from the milkshake, but cheerfully kept eating. Flo only ate pizza with white sauce, not tomato sauce, which turned out to be a great choice, even if Grantaire did joke about her rich boyfriends ruining her for regular food.

"Everyone come means you, too," he told Éponine after lunch. "I get that you've been avoiding us what with the whole Ducky and The Lark situation. But come on, it's my birthday."

"Why does she get to be The Lark and I'm stuck with Nophelia?" she demanded. "Also, who said I was avoiding anyone?"

"Hombre noticed, and Hombre's always right."

\--

She still thought about not coming. Marius and Cosette would be all over each other and she would probably end up dancing with a stranger.

But as the day progressed, the texts kept coming. Eventually, Marius texted, _"yes of course :)"_ and she sighed, frustrated that that was what made up her mind for her. She had barely spoken with Marius since he and Cosette got together, and seeing him with her was better than not seeing him at all.

(The part of her brain that was always playing a song supplied,  _"Yeah, I know it's stupid. I just gotta see it for myself.")_

\--

Swing Night was a free one-hour swing lesson followed by "free dance," where the students who attended did everything from real dancing to clumsy repetition of the steps they had learned. Grantaire was, predictably, an amazing dancer, though when he danced with Éponine, she noticed his eyes constantly on the door. Maybe he was waiting for Joly to show up. More likely, he was hoping for Enjolras.

Apart from Grantaire, no one knew what they were doing, though they all tried. Courfeyrac was especially enthusiastic, even if Grantaire and Bossuet kept lecturing, "not so much with the hips! This is _swing_ dancing!"

Éponine mostly danced with Combeferre, because most of her experience with couples dancing was with Gavroche, and Combeferre wasn't much taller, even if he was considerably less likely to slip frogs into people's pockets. She kept expecting him to want to trade dance partners, but every time a dance ended and she didn't switch, he just looked happier.

When Joly walked in, one hand holding his cane and the other holding Musichetta, Bahorel and Grantaire briefly paused their paired dance to exchange bewildered glances, before quickly resuming. Musichetta and Joly waited for the dance to finish, Joly cheering his friends on and Musichetta smiling, then Joly hobbled over to Bossuet and urged Musichetta in his direction. "You two should dance together!" he said, his voice high enough that Éponine heard it clearly from her row.

 _What the fuck,_ she thought, but Bossuet smiled graciously and took Musichetta's hand.

"He's too nice for his own good," she muttered.

"Bossuet or Joly?" asked Combeferre.

She shook her head, and he didn't press. She liked that about him. He also didn't comment on how often her eyes wandered to Marius, though his tiny hands did grip her a little tighter every time. Marius, predictably, danced with Cosette for almost the entire night. He did dance with Courfeyrac once, while she danced with Grantaire, but it hadn't been his idea-- Éponine heard Cosette sweetly insist that she get a chance with the master.

The lesson was over and they had been free dancing for about twenty minutes when Enjolras showed up. Éponine knew he was there not because she was watching the door but because Grantaire immediately abandoned his partner and bounded toward the door.

Éponine danced closer to their general direction so she could eavesdrop. Combeferre complied easily.

"You came!" Though she couldn't see his face, the excitement in his voice was so audible that Éponine considered letting go of Combeferre, shaking Enjolras by the shoulders, and shouting, _"LOOK AT HIM."_

Enjolras surveyed the room with a bemused expression, then turned to Grantaire. "So how does this work?"

Grantaire held out his arm. Even watching from behind, Éponine could see the moment when he hesitated. Luckily, the moment didn't last: Enjolras took his hand as if it wasn't a big deal.

Éponine managed to avoid watching them the entire dance mostly by watching Musichetta and Bossuet instead. After Bossuet had stepped on her foot at least twice (it may well have been more than twice, but Éponine heard Musichetta yelp about it twice) they had given up on dancing, and were sitting in a corner together, talking intently.

After one dance, they swapped; Enjolras danced with Combeferre, Grantaire at Éponine. Grantaire was a joy to dance with, his steps sure, his rhythm perfect, his dance full of flair and spins, but he didn't pretend not to be staring at Enjolras the whole time. This gave Éponine the opportunity to stare at Marius instead of just glancing at him, as she had when dancing with Combeferre.

Cosette was beautiful, graceful, and somehow managed to pull off wearing an _actual ball gown,_ because apparently no one had ever explained to her that there was a time and place for certain clothes. Marius wasn't remotely graceful, but his eyes were full of adoration and wonder. Éponine wished she hadn't looked.

When the dance ended, Combeferre marched Enjolras over. Éponine didn't try to restrain her laugh at his ability to march his much taller friend.

"He's too tall and he can't dance, _you_ take him," he ordered, shoving a surprisingly tolerant Enjolras at a delighted-looking Grantaire.

Éponine and Combeferre danced together again, and then again. On the later dance, Éponine scanned the room, and was surprised to see the Enjolras and Grantaire still dancing together. Grantaire was full of laughter, and Enjolras was looking at him with an expression Éponine had never seen on his face before -- a little startled, but soft, lips curved as if he didn't even realize he was smiling.

"He doesn't hate him," she realized out loud.

Combeferre looked shocked. "Did you think he did?"

"Well," she said flatly, "the fact that you know who I'm talking about..."

\--

Combeferre walked her home again.

She surveyed the room before she left, an instinct from years of heists. Joly, Jehan, and Feuilly had left, as had several of Grantaire's non-ABC friends. Bahorel and their girlfriend had gone from dancing while she laughed relentlessly to groping in a corner while she laughed relentlessly--her neck, apparently, was very ticklish. From the looks of it, Courfeyrac and the girl he was dancing with were a few well-timed hip-twists from doing the same. Enjolras and Grantaire were among the only pairs still dancing. Several pairs were now sitting in chairs and talking--Bossuet and Musichetta, Flo and a rather ugly white boy with platinum-dyed hair and extremely expensive shoes, Marius and Cosette.

She didn't want to focus on the last two, but she couldn't help it.

 _"_ _I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her,"_ she sang softly as she and Combeferre walked back. He knew what she sounded like anyway, and the ABC all seemed inclined to random singing.

In fact, Combeferre joined her, providing mezzo-soprano overtones to,  _"I'm right over here, why can't you see me?"_ He started to sing,  _"I'm giving it my all,"_ but fell silent for,  _"I'm not the girl you're taking home."_ She supposed that wouldn't be much fun for a trans boy to sing. Combeferre and Bahorel were the only members of the group who ever changed gender descriptors, Combeferre firmly taking the pronouns of a straight male and Bahorel shying away from anything that would mark them as male.

When she reached the line, _"I keep dancing on my own,"_ Combeferre smiled a little.

"Should I feel insulted?" he asked.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just a song."

"Right." She didn't know why she bothered lying to anyone with eyes like his, large and dark and utterly knowing.

Éponine looked away.

"Don't stop singing on my account," Combeferre said gently. "You have a wonderful voice. Though there are several Robyn songs you might find less upsetting. Have you heard _Indestructible?"_

 _"Dancing on My Own_ matches my feelings better," she admitted. It wasn't as if she wasn't obvious about it. Marius clearly hadn't noticed, but that was Marius.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. With other people, it might have felt awkward, but Combeferre was a good person to be silent around. It felt comfortable and companionable, the silence of not needing to talk rather than not knowing what to say.

They were almost at the door when Combeferre said, "this is none of my business, but I think Marius is a fool."

She blinked, then laughed. It was an unhappy sound, but not as biting as she wanted it to be. "Have you _met_ Cosette? She's basically perfect."

"Cosette is lovely," he acknowledged, formal as always. "But I prefer you."

It made her want to cry, but not the way being yelled at her dad did. It made her want to cry like her favorite songs, or like someone touching her hair. For a wild moment, she considered hugging him, but no one ever hugged her, so she managed a wavery smile instead. "Goodnight, Combeferre."

"Goodnight, Éponine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will see right below that a "works inspired by this one" section now exists! elentari7 made me a gorgeous banner because she is the best. Go check it out and show her some love. :D


	15. if they knew how misery loved me

_Drink up, it's last call, last resort_  
_but only the first mistake and now_  
_I'm two quarters and a heart down_  
_and I don't want to forget how your voice sounds._  
_These words are all I have so I'll write them  
_ _so you need them just to get by._

 _\-- "Dance Dance,"_ Fall Out Boy

 

**December Part 2**

Bossuet sent the "E/R Discussion" GroupMe a message on Friday.

 **Eagle:** _You should all know that R has been wandering around, dancing with the air, singing the words, "leader in re-e-e-e-e-ed is dancing with me."_

 **Eagle:** _I was gonna make fun of him for spending his first day of being 21 COMPLETELY SOBER but I'm enjoying this too much._

 **Eagle:** _What song is that even a reference to?_

 **Jehan:** _Lady in Red. It's a beautiful love song. Look it up._

 **Eagle:** _You thought Dance Dance was a beautiful love song._

 **Jehan:** _It is!!_

 **Jehan:** _It's a heartfelt ode to writing! And misery! And love itself!_

 **Eagle:** _...I really thought you were gonna say 'to dancing'_

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _But the dude's...bad at writing._

 **BUTTERCUP, BITCHES:** _Also like, who wants a pity fuck_

 **Eagle:** _Not all of us have your luck in love, Buttercup._

 **Feuilly:** _How do any of you even understand the words to that song?_

 **Courfycat:** _Literally don't even know what song y'all are on about_

 **Eagle:** _Hot damn!_

 **Courfycat:** _Et tu, Bossuet?_

 **Eagle:** _Well, R's not on this GroupMe so someone had to say it_

\--

In class next to Bossuet, Éponine blurted, "why did Joly bring Musichetta to Grantaire's party?"

"He probably wants us to get along. It's nice of him, really."

"Nice of him to _bring his new girlfriend and shove her at you."_

Bossuet sighed. "I get that you're mad. Fact is, I kind of appreciate it. Not that I want anyone mad at him, but you know."

She did know--she had a similar reaction with her parents, at once defensive of their secrets and appreciating the protectiveness that she sometimes got from adults or Gavroche. It made her feel less unreasonable when she felt upset herself. And because Bossuet was a nicer person than her, he was trying very hard to keep the entire thing secret from Joly's friends. Éponine was just the girl Joly worked on physics with; her anger couldn't hurt his feelings.

"But Joly's being sweet about it, okay? He hasn't even mentioned to anyone that they're dating, even though they're together all the time."

That sounded less like 'sweet' and more like 'not wanting to deal with how the ABC would react,' but Bossuet clearly wasn't going to budge on this, and the professor had started lecturing.

"Have you even talked to anyone about this?" she asked when class was over. "Or are you too concerned with protecting Joly? Like, have you even talked to R?"

Bossuet smiled a very unhappy smile. "R kind of drew a line in the sand with the whole, well, you were there."

She had been there for plenty of things, but she knew what he meant--the night no one ever talked about, when Joly had a panic attack and Grantaire both literally and figuratively slammed the door in Bossuet's face. "Were you pissed at him for that?" she asked.

He blinked. "Why would I be? R's our best friend; he was just helping."

 _Helping **one** of you._ Even as she thought it, she knew it was unfair. Protecting one person at another's expense was a lot harder to argue with when the one in need of protection was hyperventilating on the ground. "I thought Courfeyrac was your best friend." Though, in retrospect, that opinion _had_ come from Grantaire.

"Sure. Courf's everyone's best friend, for one thing. But R's _ours."_

"He doesn't even think you like him."

Bossuet snorted. "Yeah, well, he's also a dumbass. We going to lunch or what?"

\--

Winter came all at once. One day, the air was cool but bearable. The next, Éponine couldn't go outside without her fingers changing color. She stubbornly stuck to her sandals, but she wore socks with them. Jehan also wore socks with his sandals. She couldn't tell if that made her feel better or worse. He certainly had an elaborate sock collection. All Éponine had were thick grey men's socks, bought in bulk and worn until the bottoms were full of holes. But it wasn't as if anyone was looking at her feet anyway.

Jehan also owned a giant, puffy, neon-green coat that made him look like a radioactive marshmallow. Walking to class one day, she caught Feuilly squeezing him into a fluffy hug and laughing about it. It looked like fun, but she kept walking.

Joly, predictably, started showing up to class wrapped in so many layers that she was surprised he didn't think he was going to strangle himself with the weight of all his scarves. Bossuet had a coat so old that holes were forming in the elbows.

One night, walking home from the library wrapped in her too-big, floor-length brown coat, she ran into Marius and Cosette. Marius's face was wrapped in a scarf, his small but adorable eyes all that were visible. Cosette, meanwhile, had a grand robe of what she hoped was fake fur, complete with a big fluffy white muff for her hands. She looked like something from an old painting. When they saw her, Marius waved and Cosette smiled.

Éponine wavered on the sidewalk for a long moment, considering saying something. She settled on a terse nod and walking very quickly. They weren't going in the direction of the freshman dorms anyway; they were going in the direction of Cosette's room.

\--

Grantaire, of course, felt the only way to stay warm was to stay in pubs and drink. He and Bahorel both seemed to know every bar owner within walking distance of campus, and had somehow convinced every one of them that checking ID's was useless. "It's a shame, really, since I'm _finally_ twenty-one."

Bahorel and Grantaire managed to charm a bartender into letting Joly, Jehan, and Éponine in. Or really, Bahorel charmed and Grantaire just threw out philosophical and political arguments until it wasn't worth the effort. Either way, they all ended up in a bar, playing a game called Bullshit. The trick seemed to be 'lie and guess when people are lying.' Éponine, a master at both, won every round.

Grantaire and Bahorel, predictably, screamed, "bullshit" at the top of their lungs and still managed to crescendo. Joly tried to shriek it but mostly squeaked it with a giggle. Éponine just said it, flat and certain. Jehan mostly murmured under his breath, getting many pokes from Bahorel. "The game is called _bullshit,_ Jehan, not _politely cleaned bowl of fecal matter._ Scream it, I know you've got it in you!"

Joly left the soonest, nervous about the cold. "You can't actually catch a cold just because it's cold, that's a myth, but it lowers your immune system and besides I should get some sleep, but this was so much fun, goodnight!"

Éponine kept her eyes on her cards while Jehan, Bahorel, and Grantaire said goodbye cheerfully. When Joly had left, Bahorel slapped his cards on the table and said, "speaking of bullshit, are we ever gonna talk about the Santa and Eagle thing?"

Grantaire raised an eyebrow. "It's been almost a month. Why d'you want to talk _now?"_

"I just can't fucking wrap my head around it!" Bahorel protested as Jehan uncomfortably shuffled and reshuffled the spare cards.

Grantaire shrugged. "I can't either. Not that I really have the whole story, since Santa's, y'know, not always a reliable narrator, and Eagle told me he didn't want to talk to me about it, which. Fair." He frowned at the cards.

"It kind of pisses me off," Bahorel acknowledged. "I mean, I love Santa, but--"

"Hey." Grantaire's eyes narrowed. "That's not fair, he just tried to do what he thought would make Bossuet happy--"

 _"What?"_ demanded Éponine. Jehan said nothing, but several of his cards did spill.

Bahorel protested, “look, I get that he’s your best friend, but a pretty good rule of thumb for making people happy is not cheating on them--”

“The _fuck_ you say?”

Éponine, Bahorel, and Jehan looked at each other. Jehan, who Éponine had always suspected was the bravest one, said, "we were under the impression that Joly was cheating."

"Did  _Bossuet_ tell you that?" His expression was somewhere between astonished and murderous. It annoyed Éponine. Why did people act as if they were entitled to secrecy when they did terrible things, when the obvious way to protect their reputation would be to not do terrible things in the first place? Before she could retort that Bossuet had done his best to protect Joly from the consequences of his own actions, Grantare had grabbed his phone,  punched a speed dial number, and put it to his ear. He spoke sharply, just naming the bar and saying, "come now," before hanging up and storming outside.

"He's going to do something stupid," Bahorel observed. Jehan was already following Grantaire. Éponine and Bahorel were quick to do the same.

Grantaire had stopped in front of the street, his angry breath forming pale streams from his nostrils.

Bossuet showed up surprisingly quickly, having clearly run all the way there, his eyes frantic. When he saw Grantaire, he huffed out a laugh that turned into a white cloud. _"Christ,_ R, the way you were talking I thought you needed to go to the emergency room, what's--" he was cut off when Grantaire, who had crossed the space between them in two angry strides, shoved him in the chest.

Éponine lunged in Grantaire's direction, but Jehan stepped in front of her with his hands raised placatingly. If it had been anyone else, except Marius or Combeferre, she would have pushed him aside, but his quiet conviction made her pause for the moment.

Clumsy as ever, Bossuet started to fall over. Grantaire caught him, but his grip was not gentle. "You think Joly was _cheating_ on you?" he shouted.

The bewilderment on Bossuet's face shifted into something tight and pinched. "I told you, I don't want to talk about--"

"It's a fucking yes or no question," Grantaire snarled. _"Answer it."_

Bossuet pressed his lips together and nodded.

"How could you think-- _Joly of all people_ \--he's got his anxiety thing messing with his judgment, what's _your_ excuse?"

"Well, gee, there's the bit where I'd been cheated on by everyone I've ever dated--"

"Yeah," Grantaire interrupted, "and Joly's response to someone having had shit happen to them is _totally,_ 'great, I should do that, too!' Joly whose entire fucking goal in life is making people’s lives better, and he _loves_ you, he would never have done that to you, _how could you not know that?"_ He screamed the last part.

Bossuet looked as if Grantaire had hurled ice water in his face.

"And the _incredibly fucking stupid thing_ \--you want to know why he broke up with you? Between all the awkwardness and the random...singing with other people and what-the-fuck-ever--"

"I was trying to give him space," Bossuet said, his voice so soft that Grantaire didn't even pause, probably didn't even hear.

"--and the _nonstop Musichetta questions,_ he thought _you_ wanted to date _her_ and he was breaking up for _your_ sake, which means you have both been making yourselves miserable for _no fucking reason.”_ He drew his fist back like he was about to punch Bossuet.

Éponine had a knife against Grantaire's stomach before he could try.

Grantaire blinked down at the knife. His hands stayed frozen, one in the air, the other still holding Bossuet.

During Grantaire's rant, Bossuet had been staring at him with a mixture of shock and faint nausea, but not a trace of fear. Now, he looked terrified. "Um, 'Ponine? 'Ponine, you can put the knife down, he's not going to hurt me--"

"How do you know?" she snarled.

Grantaire flinched violently, dropping both hands to his sides. The movement was so sharp that Éponine had to pull the knife away to avoid accidentally stabbing him, but she kept it pointed in his direction.

Bewildered, Bossuet answered, "because he's _R?"_

"What does _that_ have to do with anything?"

Bossuet opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. On the third attempt at opening, he asked, "can you maybe trust me to make my own judgments about people?"

"You did think Joly was cheating on you," Bahorel pointed out.

The nausea returned to Bossuet's face.

Grantaire objected, "hey, it's not funny until he fixes it." He looked at Bossuet warily. "You're going to fix it, right?"

Éponine slowly lowered the knife, but didn't put it away.

Bossuet rubbed the back of his neck. "You said he broke up with me because he thought I had a crush on Musichetta?"

Grantaire groaned. "Oh god, what's wrong _now?"_ He kept a careful distance from Bossuet as he said it, like he didn't trust himself any more than Éponine did.

"Well, he's...not...wrong."

Grantaire stared at him as if he were speaking a language he didn't know.

Bossuet faltered and looked at the ground. "I wanted to like her for Joly's sake, and then I... _really_ liked her. Also I couldn't stop, uh, picturing. Them."

He continued staring for a long moment, then decided, "I need another drink." He turned back towards the bar.

"R?" Bossuet said.

 _"What?"_ Grantaire snapped, turning around. Éponine's fingers tightened on the knife hilt, but Grantaire made no move in Bossuet's direction.

Bossuet looked paler than usual, and ill. "I'm sorry."

Grantaire squinted at him. "You know what your problem is?"

"Is this really the time?" Jehan asked, at the same time as Bahorel muttered, "he's like a dog with a bone, isn't he?"

Grantaire ignored both of them. "You're so used to the world shitting on you that you don't get pissed off when it's actual people being shitty. So I _reject_ your stupid-ass apology, _and_ I apologize to _you._ So ha!" He turned around again and stomped back into the bar.

"Could someone he's less pissed at go make sure he doesn't hurt himself?" Bossuet asked.

Bahorel started to follow Grantaire. Worriedly, Jehan said, "if he hits you, you'll hit back."

"Nah," Bahorel reassured him. "I'll just pin him to a table or something. 'Ponine here would knife him, and then Enjo and Jo and Bo would have to kill her." They glanced at Éponine, who still had her knife, and amended, "and then she'd have to kill Enjo and Jo and Bo. Which would kind of suck for the group. And Hombre would feel pretty conflicted, what with--" They stopped when Jehan shushed them.

"Please don't say Enjo," Bossuet said. The attempt at humor might have worked better if he didn't still look ready to throw up. Bahorel went into the bar. Bossuet turned to Éponine. "Can we talk?"

 

 


	16. wanting far too much for far too long

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People have been making such nice things for the fic!
> 
> Fanart for chapter 14: http://brightmetalonasullenground.tumblr.com/post/116479492660/my-take-on-the-awesome-you-want-a-revolution#notes  
> Playlist: http://humboldt-squid.tumblr.com/post/116647874957/every-song-ever-mentioned-by-name-in

_Looking back, I could have played it differently._  
_Won a few more moments, who can tell?_  
_But it took time to understand the man._  
_Now at least, I know I know him well._  
_Wasn’t it good? (Oh so good.)_  
_Wasn’t he fine? (Oh so fine.)_  
_Isn’t it madness, he can't be mine?_  
_But in the end, he needs a little bit more than me_

        --  _"I Know Him So Well,"_ Chess

**December Part 3**

Jehan politely excused himself and Éponine tucked her knife back under her skirt.

“Look, I’m sure you have a good reason for carrying knives around on a college campus, but you can trust R, okay? He never hurts anyone except himself.”

Éponine raised her eyebrows. “Has he ever pushed you before?”

“No! He’s all talk, and even then the talk is, is, ‘ha-ha, you have no hair.’ He's obnoxious, not _malicious.”_

“Right, so if you didn’t know his limits an hour ago, what makes you think you know them now?”

Bossuet blinked at her several times before asking, “Are you trying to warn me to be afraid of R? Because I can tell you right now, that’s really not going to work.”

“And you telling me to trust an angry drunk man with his fist in the air isn’t going to work either, no matter how much we like him the rest of the time! Stop,” she added when his expression turned sympathetic. “Don’t assume you understand me.”

“Well, as we know, my assumptions about people aren’t so hot lately,” he said, with a twist to his mouth that looked like it wanted to be humorous, but failed. “But a couple months ago, I assumed that just because some people had treated me one way and I blamed it on just, just whatever curse Madame Zeroni placed on my great-great-grandfather, that meant that other people were also going to be like that. You’re sure you’re not doing anything similar?”

She wasn’t sure what he had just said, but he looked sad enough that she decided to stop arguing. For the moment. “What would make you feel better right now?” she asked.

“I don’t even know.” He sighed, rubbing his bald spot ruefully. “Usually it takes a lot to get me down, but this--I fucked up.” He sighed again. “I should talk to Joly, I guess, but I kind of think I need to take a night to wallow? But my usual wallowing buddy isn’t exactly happy with me at the moment.”

The regret in his voice made Éponine want to wave a knife at Grantaire again, for an entirely different reason. She had some sympathy with his inability to recognize that his friends cared about him, but it hadn’t occurred to her that that would keep him from recognizing when his friends needed him. Bossuet hadn’t just had to deal with his boyfriend breaking up with him; he had needed to deal with it without being able to confide in their mutual best friend, or really any of their friends, for that matter.

“Well, if the knife-waving didn’t throw you off too much, I’m pretty good at wallowing R-style,” she offered.

Bossuet raised both eyebrows in a gesture remarkably reminiscent of Grantaire himself. “You want to get drunk and make fun of each other while loudly singing dramatic songs?”

“I was mostly thinking loudly singing dramatic songs, but I could work in some mockery if you want to buy alcohol.”

This time, his laugh had genuine humor in it.

“Want to come to my room?” asked Éponine. She didn’t need to worry that Bossuet of all people would see it as an invitation to take advantage. He was distracted by being infatuated with two other people, and besides, she was pretty sure she could take him.

“Aren’t your suitemates asleep?”

She shrugged. “Those bitches never liked me anyway.”

He laughed harder.

\--

Bossuet did not question her insistence that lying on her floor was the traditional form of ABC wallowing. “I’m not entirely sure what song would work for this situation,” Éponine admitted, when they were both stretched out on the floor. Most of her wallowing songs were about loneliness and longing, not about ‘I thought my boyfriend cheated on me and now I like the girl I thought he cheated with.’ Also, the fact that Bossuet’s _song about being cheated on_ was more cheerful than anything Éponine listened to regularly suggested that her repertoire would be especially inappropriate.

“Do you know the musical Chess?”

She knew it because the chorus of _One Night in Bangkok_ had been a favorite of one of the human traffickers her parents worked with, and she had liked the song enough to look up the rest of the musical. But that didn’t seem like it would go over well, especially given that Bossuet currently lived with Courfeyrac and Combeferre, who in their own distinct ways were two of the most adamant feminists Éponine had ever met. “The one ABBA made, right?”

He beamed. “Yes! I am so depressed whenever Mamma Mia is the only ABBA-related musical people have heard of. I mean, it’s adorable, but it also brought back the jukebox musical, which you should really ask Hombre about. But anyway, Chess. I listened to _Someone Else’s Story_ for wallowing purposes, but turns out that doesn’t fit at all, but do you know the song _I Know Him so Well?”_

“If by ‘do you know,’ you mean, ‘have you dueted with yourself in the shower?’ Yes.”

He laughed, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He shut said eyes for a moment before singing, _“nothing is so good it lasts eternally. Perfect situations must go wrong. But…”_

When he trailed off, Éponine, familiar with the feeling of being choked up by a lyric, quickly supplied, _“this has never yet prevented me, wanting far too much for far too long.”_

Bossuet looked surprised for some reason, but they both kept singing. If Bossuet teared up a little on _“looking back, I could have played it differently,”_ well, it wasn’t as if Éponine’s voice didn’t tremble on _“though I move my world to be with him, still the gap between us is too wide.”_ At least they were sad together (especially on the line, _“but in the end, he needs a little bit more than me.)_ Shared sadness was the point of group wallowing, after all.

They gained energy as the song went on, their voices eventually reaching a borderline shout on, _“didn’t I know how it would go; if I knew from the start, why am I fa-alling a-PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAART?”_

“Shut up!” shrieked one of her suitemates, probably Irma.

Bossuet burst out laughing. Éponine smiled over at him and crooned the final lines. When Bossuet had finished laughing, he wiped his eyes (the tears had been from earlier in the song, but Éponine didn’t comment) and grinned at her, red-eyed but seemingly cheerful. “I had no idea you could sing like that.”

Oh. Right.

“Combeferre’s the only one who knows. He thinks I should sing _Indestructible_ by Robyn.”

Bossuet beamed. “I love that song.”

“Don’t tell Courfeyrac I can sing, though. I told him I couldn’t.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he said. “So should I pretend I don’t know who you were singing about?”

She shrugged. “It’s not like no one else has figured it out.”

“You know I love the kid, but I think there are plenty of more ’Ponine-worthy fish in the sea. Especially for you.” She considered demanding further details, but the energy he gained from the song had visibly drained, and he rested his head back on the table. “Cool if I crash here? I’m pretty sure I’ll get frostbite if I walk home right now.”

He didn’t have his coat on, Éponine realized. He had gotten Grantaire’s voicemail and come running.

“The air mattress is probably more comfortable,” she suggested.

“What, you’re not storing a knife under there? Reminds me, I should make sure R doesn’t have alcohol poisoning.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a text. After a ding, he showed Éponine the texts.

 **From Bossuet:** _How’s R holding up?_ **  
From Buttercup:** _I got him to his room, he’s mostly been in fetal position mumbling curse words and calling himself a shithead. I get the feeling he’s sorry. You ok?_

“I don’t care if he’s sorry,” Éponine retorted, “I care if he’s going to stop.”

“Going to stop getting mad when he finds out other people’s stupidity have been making his friends miserable, or going to stop getting drunk off his ass? Because either way, I’m guessing no.”

\--

On Facebook, Bossuet messaged her a picture: a row of jelly doughnuts and maple bars, with chocolate syrup spelling out the word “SORRY.” With the picture, Bossuet messaged, “Never let it be said that R does not know how to apologize. He remembered all my favorite fillings and everything.”

“Have you talked to Joly yet?” she replied.

“Haven’t had a chance. Doesn’t feel right by text. I was thinking pset session tomorrow? But I might need a push.”

“I’m good at those.”

\--

It was the last problem set session of the semester, and Grantaire didn’t show up. Which, all things considered, wasn’t much of a surprise.

Éponine was, by now, unsurprised by Bossuet’s ability to act cheerful in the fact of anything. She was also, by now, no longer fooled by it. When they had all finished their problem sets, she stood up and announced, “now that we don’t have class together, I think you two need to talk.”

Joly looked terrified. Bossuet looked rueful. “’Ponine, when I said push, I didn’t quite mean—”

“It’s December and I’m sick of this. You talk now. Joly,” she addressed Joly, who nearly jumped. “You broke up with Bossuet because you thought he liked Musichetta, right?”

Joly’s mouth fell open. He opened and closed it several times, reminding her of Bossuet when he defended Grantaire. These three spent so much time together that they had picked up all each other’s facial tics. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice squeaky, “I just—she’s great and I didn’t want to be in the way if—“

“Did you think he was cheating on you?”

“No!” This time there was no pause. He quickly, entreatingly, turned to Bossuet. “I know you wouldn’t do something like that, you don’t think I thought that do you?”

Bossuet looked thoroughly miserable, and Éponine took a moment to wonder whether she had made a tremendous mistake. “Actually, I kind of. Thought you were cheating. On me.”

By some miracle that defied both the laws of time and facial features, Joly’s face managed to freeze, shrink, and crumple at the same time.

“Alright, my job here is done,” decided Éponine, and she left the room. She closed the door most of the way, then peered through the crack she had left herself.

Joly was taller than Bossuet--he was, in fact, the tallest member of the ABC, except Enjolras--but in that moment he looked puny, his skinny shoulders hunched and his thin, nervous face still crumpled. Even his voice was tiny as he asked, “was I that bad a boyfriend?”

 _“No._ No! You were amazing, you were--it’s just, all my relationships have turned to shit, all my everything has turned to shit, so I was always coming at this from a place of...this is too good to last.”

Joly stared at the floor. Voice still tiny, he said, “I didn’t know you thought that."

“It’s not that I didn’t want it to last,” Bossuet added hurriedly. “I would have dated you for _ever,_ fuck, you could have been with two other people at the same time, I wouldn’t have cared. I just didn’t think forever could happen.”

Joly’s voice was barely audible as he replied, “I wanted to date you forever, too.”

“I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.”

“Well.” Joly took a deep breath. “I…R asked if I wasn’t projecting a little, and I. I did, I _do_ like her, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it!”

“Same,” said Bossuet. “All three, same.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

“So now what?”

“I don’t know.”

Éponine narrowly avoided the urge to groan loudly enough for both of them to hear. Instead, she pulled out her phone and sent an iMessage to Grantaire.

 **From Éponine:** _Enough of this “stand around and trust them to make their own choices” bullshit. We have to fix it.  
_ **From R:** _Oh thank the Godless heavens. What’s the plan?_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many versions of "I Know Him So Well" exist online, though none sung by a baritone boy and an Éponine-voice-part girl. My personal favorite is the version sung by Julia Murney and Sutton Foster!


	17. wanna make you move

_I’m still imagining a dark-lit place_  
_or your place or my place._  
_Well, I’m not paralyzed_  
_but I seem to be struck by you._  
_I want to make you move,_  
_because you’re standing still._

            -- _“Paralyzer,”_ Finger Eleven

**December Part 4**

Grantaire and Éponine, as it turned out, were terrible at making plans, so they decided to consult the only reasonable person they knew.

“I respect your intentions,” said Combeferre, perched on one of the triumvirate couches with remarkable dignity considering his feet didn’t touch the ground, “but I have a strict policy of not interfering in my friends’ love lives.”

“I don’t!” said Courfeyrac, draped across the other couch.

“All your romantic advice involves unbuttoning shirts,” Combeferre objected.

“Shirt unbuttoning is _great_ advice. I could even unbutton my shirt in solidarity.”

“How would that even—no,” Combeferre interrupted himself. “I am not interfering.” He pulled a neurobiology textbook from his backpack and dutifully opened it.

Courfeyrac stuck his tongue out at Combeferre’s bowed head and then turned back to Éponine and Grantaire—Éponine on the couch next to Combeferre, Grantaire cross-legged the floor. “We could remind them of their deep and abiding love via dramatic reenactment? Or a flash mob? Or something involving spotlights? Please let there be spotlights involved. I know people.”

“Aren’t you sleeping with Bossuet?” demanded Éponine.

“That was _one time,_ and he shouted ‘hot damn’ after the orgasm, so. Never again.” Grantaire laughed so hard he rolled backwards. Courfeyrac glared at him. “You have _ruined my sex life_ and _I hate you.”_

“I’m sure he meant it as a compliment,” said Combeferre evenly, which just made Grantaire laugh harder.

“Sass counts as interfering. Anyway, given that I was basically a rebound from them making out _two weeks after they broke up,_ I figure all we have to do is stick them in one room until their desperate desire to be together becomes too great to handle.”

“Usually I’d call you a hopeless optimist, but with those two, you could be onto something,” Grantaire mused as Éponine mouthed ‘hopeless optimist?’ at Courfeyrac, who shrugged dramatically. “Those two just don’t do sad, no matter how bad things are. Like, me, I wallow in the dregs of the world, but they just fly around laughing at everything. Heck, a while back I had breakfast with them and I was going on and on about how pointless life was, and what does Joly say? He says, ‘you know what’s cool? Necks!’ And like, they managed this long on thinking the other guy was getting what he wanted, but I think if we just force them to them look and realize this is making them both unhappy, they’ll get their shit together.”

“But how are we supposed to do that now that classes are over?” Éponine asked. “Bring them to Crushes and Chaperones?” Crushes and Chaperones was the 90s throwback dance, because their college had collectively decided that the four days between classes and exams should be filled with as much partying as studying. It was a rhetorical suggestion, but of course, they took it seriously.

“That would be amazing!” Courfeyrac exulted. “R could bring Joly and I could bring Eagle, and then I could find a pretty girl or etc. to dance with, and R could, um.” He tapped his lower lip, eyebrows furrowed in dramatic contemplation. “Oh, we could get Enj to show up, and then Joly would _insist_ R dance with him.”

“I’m not sure which part of that is less likely,” said Grantaire, “getting Joly to come to a dance or getting Red to.”

“Tell me you don’t dream of serenading Enjolras with that one song about the guy with the drink and the crush," retorted Courfeyrac.

"Right," said Éponine, "that one, the single song from the 90s about alcohol and crushes." She said it partially just because the ABC didn't have performances after classes ended and she needed her weekly hit of their gorgeous voices. Combeferre made an amused little noise, either at her sarcasm or at her attempt to manipulate an impromptu performance out of them.

Grantaire half-sang, half-growled, _“I hold on so nervously, to me and my drink_ ,” and then of course their plotting had to be paused so Grantaire and Courfeyrac could jump around and sing _Paralyzer_ in the most dramatic manner possible. Combeferre was doing a remarkable job at keeping his eyes on his textbook.

Enjolras came downstairs, either to shout that he too had homework or to ask what all the commotion was about. Grantaire, predictably, leapt in his direction and sang, _“I hold out for one more drink, before I think I’m looking too desperately.”_ Courfeyrac fell silent, rolling his eyes dramatically but fondly as Grantaire sang through the verse, ending with a boom of, _“If your body matches what your eyes can do, you’d probably move right through me on my way to you!”_

“Is this your idea of a study break?” asked Enjolras. His complete calm about the impromptu serenade spoke volumes about how frequently they occurred.

“Wanna help us get Joly and Bossuet back together?”

Enjolras blinked. “I thought we came to the collective agreement to let them make their own choices.”

 _“Thank you,”_ said Combeferre plaintively, without looking up from his textbook.

"We recognize that the council has made a decision," said Courfeyrac with great dignity.

"But given that it is a stupid-ass decision," Grantaire added, and then looked at Éponine meaningfully.

It took a beat longer than it should have for Éponine to finish, "we have chosen to ignore it."

Enjolras looked at them blankly.

"It's a reference," Courfeyrac supplied.

"Ah."

“Letting them make their own choices is leading them to make the _wrong_ choices,” Grantaire protested. “They’re meant to be, and also they both love each other and have just somehow convinced themselves that that’s not enough? Somehow?”

“Then why don’t you just tell them that?” asked Enjolras.

Grantaire groaned, and Courfeyrac waved a dismissive hand. “You are no help at all.”

“Alright,” said Enjolras, still completely calm. He walked back upstairs.

“That was weird,” Éponine said.

“That was completely par for the course, actually,” answered Combeferre.

Courfeyrac and Grantaire sat back down. “But yeah, Joly at C ‘n’ C is probably a no-go,” Courfeyrac said, picking the thread of conversation back up without missing a beat. “I could throw a party here? Put together a playlist entirely of get-back-together songs. Play weighted spin-the-bottle.”

“Does anyone actually play spin-the-bottle?” asked Grantaire. “Is it not just a myth perpetrated by Hollywood?”

“Man, what kind of sad-ass parties did you go to as a kid?” demanded Courfeyrac. “Did you not play seven minutes in heaven, either?”

“Seven minutes wouldn’t cut it. I could spill something on Joly!” offered Grantaire. “And then when Bossuet offers him a new shirt, we can make sure they go into his room together, and then they can lock him in.”

“Enjolras is closer to Joly’s size,” said Combeferre. He then flipped a page in his textbook to maintain the illusion of not interfering. Éponine felt far more fondness than she had any rational reason to.

“We could spill something on Eagle instead?” Courfeyrac said. “Then he’ll have to take his shirt off.”

“Do you really think Bossuet not having a shirt on is going to solve all their problems?” Éponine asked.

“We have all seen how Rancher reacts to Eagle not having a shirt on,” Courfeyrac pointed out. “Or! I could get Bossuet to join me for the naked run, and we could conveniently pass by wherever Joly is studying and then conveniently knock them into each other.”

Éponine had heard that finals week involved students running around naked and passing out candy in the library, but she had really hoped that was a rumor.

“I feel like that could only end in Bossuet accidentally getting a pencil somewhere unpleasant,” Grantaire answered, which was a mental image Éponine had really, really not needed. From the slight twitch in Combeferre’s temple, he felt the same. “How about instead, we have all the shirts. Get the entire campus wearing TEAM SANTA + EAGLE shirts.”

“We could hang banners!” said Courfeyrac eagerly.

The twitch was getting worse.

“Or, _or_ we could convince one of them that the other is dramatically ill and the other can rush dramatically to the rescue,” Courfeyrac said. “Heck, we could convince them that it’s the end of the world and it’s their last chance to be together!”

“The end of the world, really?” Éponine asked.

“Sure! Send a few well-timed alert messages, maybe falsify some news feeds, steal the batteries from their phones and convince them all electricity has stopped working..."

"Have you ever tried stealing the battery from an iPhone?" Éponine retorted. "Because I have."

"We could pay a freshman to run past them screaming?"

“We are not,” snarled Grantaire, “pulling a fake apocalypse on _Joly.”_

They all took a moment to silently absorb just what a bad idea that would be. Even Combeferre briefly stopped pretending to read in favor of shuddering.

“I think we’re making this more complicated than it needs to be,” said Éponine, earning her a brief look of profound admiration from Combeferre before he resumed staring at the textbook.

“Well, there’s the less elaborate version,” said Courfeyrac, “where we grab both of them, run screaming down the hallway, shove them in a room together, and scream, I’LL COME BACK WHEN THEY SOUND THE ALL CLEAR.”

“Did we not hear me veto any plan that ends in my best friend dying of a heart attack?” snapped Grantaire. “Because I _fucking veto it.”_

“I can understand not wanting to like, kill him,” Courfeyrac conceded, “but I think a minor heart attack is a risk we have to be willing to take.”

“Fuck this.” Grantaire leapt to his feet with his usual borderline-boneless grace. “I’m asking Jehan and Buttercup for advice, _they_ understand how relationships work--”

“Bahorel would give both of them makeovers and Jehan would come up with something romance-movie sappy involving the first duet they sang together,” said Éponine.

“I vote either of those plans over anything we’ve thought of so far!”

“Don’t go,” protested Courfeyrac, “Combeferre’s like three bad ideas away from jumping in and saving the day.”

“Combeferre can hear you,” Combeferre said.

“See?” Courfeyrac pointed at him. “He isn’t even pretending he can’t hear us.”

Grantaire sat back down.

“Man, it’s a shame they don’t still have windows facing each other,” sighed Courfeyrac. To Éponine, he explained, “freshman Joly had to live in sophomore housing because he was allergic to something in the freshman dorm, and Bossuet was in the dorm next to it, so they could see each other from their windows.”

“Santa designed an elaborate system of arm-flapping,” sighed Grantaire nostalgically. “Eagle had no idea what it meant, but he was charmed anyway.”

“And your plan would be, what, make sure Joly’s next to the window when Bossuet walks by without a shirt on?” asked Éponine skeptically.

Courfeyrac pointed at her. “Great plan! But no, I was thinking get whoever’s playing on the bells to play their first duet together. Just picture it!” He waved an arm dramatically. “Hearing the song, and each overcome by nostalgia, they go to their windows and see each other across the way—”

“Well, since Bossuet now lives with _you,_ how about we come up with a plan that’s actually relevant to the time we’re currently in?” asked Éponine. Combeferre gave her another appreciative look. He hadn’t flipped a page in a while.

“MISTLETOE!” shouted Courfeyrac. “TIS THE FREAKIN’ SEASON.”

He shouted it loudly enough, in fact, that Enjolras called from upstairs, "MISTLETOE IS A TOOL OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT."

"It's just as well," said Grantaire. “Joly would freak out about it being poisonous.” Éponine was starting to think Courfeyrac was onto something with his ‘minor heart attack is an acceptable risk’ suggestion. “Also, just generally, I feel like Hollywood clichés aren’t gonna work with these two. Like, if this were a movie Joly’d have gotten all jealous when you two hooked up, but if the kid had a jealous bone in his body, it’d have come out a long time ago.”

Éponine pictured the stream of dirty jokes Grantaire and Bossuet had texted at each other when they went to the dance with Marius and Courfeyrac. She pictured Bossuet and Courfeyrac dancing at the Halloween party—they took the “back to back, belly to belly” line in _Zombie Jamboree_ very seriously. For all Joly’s anxiety issues, he had struck her as utterly secure in their relationship, until he hadn’t been.

Maybe that was why his belief that Bossuet liked Musichetta had been so destructive; he wouldn’t have thought it if it hadn’t been true.

“Okay, when I said ‘making this more complicated than we need to be,’ I meant ‘send them texts to get them in the same location.' Instead of, you know, _faking the apocalypse.”_

“Ridiculous ideas are part of my artistic process,” Courfeyrac protested.

“Oh!” said Grantaire. “ We can tell them the Physics final has been _last minute rescheduled,_ it’s at _this time and place hurry hurry!”_

“And then we can play smooth sax over the speakers!” said Courfeyrac.

“None of us play the saxophone,” Grantaire pointed out.

“Saxophones are _vital to the operation,_ R.”

“We could have a rehearsal everyone bails on?” Grantaire suggested. “Then we can lock them in a smaller classroom than a physics exam.”

“Enjolras won’t agree to a fake rehearsal,” said Combeferre.

“You want to suggest things, you put the book down,” Courfeyrac insisted.

Combeferre pointedly flipped the page, though Éponine had the strong suspicion he had stopped reading a while ago.

Courfeyrac rolled his eyes and resumed plotting. “Eagle’s a really heavy sleeper. We could carry him to Joly’s room in the middle of the night. Then they’d have to discuss their feelings when they’re all groggy and emotionally vulnerable. We can get their alarms to play smooth sax to wake them up!”

“Can we pull that off without giving Eagle frostbite?” Grantaire asked.

Courfeyrac frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose any of us know Musichetta well enough that we could get her to text both of them to meet her and then not make it.”

The glare Grantaire gave him would have driven a lesser man into the ground.

“Actually,” said Combeferre, snapping his textbook shut, “if our goal is to get them to communicate their desires, realize they’re essentially the same, and proceed towards happiness, it might go more smoothly with Musichetta involved.”

Courfeyrac grinned at him. “Nice of you to join us.”

“You knew I would,” replied Combeferre accusingly. Their easy confidence with each other sent a streak of longing through Éponine.

“Since the moment you pulled out the book instead of going upstairs,” agreed Courfeyrac, smug. “Man, with your brain, we could actually make this work! I can’t wait to bring out the confetti.”

“But will the confetti be playing smooth sax?” asked Éponine, pulling a small laugh out of Combeferre.

“The confetti will be _coming out_ of the saxophone, obviously!” answered Courfeyrac. “It’ll take a big of rigging, but it’ll be totally worth it.”

\--

In the end, the solution was as simple as planning a physics study session and sending Musichetta a Facebook message.“Hey,” Éponine typed. “Can I ask you a question about the Joly and Bossuet situation?”

Musichetta replied right away, from Mobile. “Oh god. I consider myself a patient person, but the fact that those two aren’t together anymore is a crying tragedy. All Joly ever talks about is how great Boss is, and when I talk to Boss (which isn’t as often but still), all HE ever wants to talk about is how Joly’s doing.”

Éponine wondered if she owed Joly an apology for being mad at him when he hadn’t known she was mad in the first place. “So if I asked you to help us with an intervention to stick them back together, it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest?”

“Hey, just because I think they’re both babes doesn’t mean I don’t want them to be babes together. Who’s we?”

“R and me. And kind of the flirty Galinda, but his contribution is mostly a cassette tape with saxophone music (don’t ask).” Combeferre had helped come up with the plan, but refused to actually be present. He had to draw the line somewhere, he insisted.

\--

Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire were already in the library study room when Éponine entered with Musichetta. “The fuck,” said Grantaire.

Joly’s notebook fell out of his hand, spraying old problem sets everywhere. “H-hi, Musichetta!” he squeaked.

“Hello,” she answered evenly. She and Enjolras could have a contest of who had a better poker face, Éponine mused.

“This is an ambush, isn’t it?” asked Bossuet. He didn’t sound fazed, but then, Éponine had seen him fazed approximately once in the time she had known him.

“Well, it was supposed to be, but what’s _she_ doing here?” Grantaire pointed at Musichetta, who gave him a profoundly unimpressed look.

“Your friend invited me,” Musichetta replied, tossing her head in Éponine’s direction.

“Éponine,” Grantaire said in a voice that was trying very hard not to be a shout. “Can I talk to you privately for a second?”

Éponine shrugged. “Talk amongst yourselves,” she told the other three, before she and Grantaire marched into a corner.

The move proved completely useless when Grantaire shouted, “this was not the plan!”

“I made my own plan,” snapped Éponine. “Combeferre was right; they can’t solve a problem with just two-thirds of the variables. These idiots already know they love each other, did we really think saxophones were going to change anything?”

Grantaire’s eyes darted frantically to Joly. In an undertone, he hissed, “don’t you think springing this on _the one with the anxiety disorder—“_

“Really?” she hissed back. “We’re going to talk about springing things on people?”

Grantaire’s eyes widened and he swallowed a little. Bossuet had clearly forgiven him for the night outside the bar, but Grantaire had just as clearly not forgiven himself. “I’m an asshole, okay? I acknowledge that I’m an asshole. But _Joly--”_

He fell silent when Bossuet said, to Joly, “you should ask her out.”

“What?” Musichetta asked.

 _“What?”_ Joly squawked.

“Seems reasonable,” said Éponine. It was a bluff, but she had always been good at bluffing.

 _“What?”_ demanded Grantaire.

She raised both her eyebrows. “If they’re both so infatuated with her that they can’t be with each other, one of them may as well date her. She likes both of them.”

Joly stammered for several seconds.

“’Ponine’s right,” said Bossuet, eliciting a strangled noise from Grantaire. “We aren’t dating anyway, and you said you like her, and I thought in the first place that the whole point of the break-up was you two being together, so like, better than both of us liking two people and not being with them, right?”

“No,” said Joly. His voice was so quick and quiet it sounded more involuntary than anything else, but the sudden lift of his chin was very deliberate. He addressed Musichetta instead of Bossuet. “Sorry for dragging you here. But I can’t—I _don’t want_ to be in a relationship that doesn’t involve Bossuet.”

“Now was that so hard?” asked Éponine.

Grantaire’s scrunched eyelids emphatically communicated that she should have found a better way to force that communication out of them. Éponine hoped her eyebrows communicated how little she cared.

Musichetta looked from Joly (whose chin was still lifted, but trembling slightly) and Bossuet (who was staring at Joly.) “Let me see if I’m understanding the situation. You two aren’t dating because you both like me,” (their expressions changed to identical looks of embarrassment) “but neither of you are dating me--even though I think I have made my interest _pretty damn clear--_ because you’re madly in love with each other.”

At the last, Bossuet grinned a helpless grin, and Joly smiled back. It was brief, but perfectly timed to coincide.

“They’ve been frozen in place for a month and it’s awful,” Grantaire supplied.

Musichetta looked at both of them again, slow and calculating. Then a smile broke across her face. She had beautiful dimples. “Boys,” she said. “You realize there’s an obvious solution here, right?”

 


	18. a daughter of the race of Cain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I am sorry for the absurdly long time between updates. I was busy writing a non-fanfiction manuscript (which is now completed! *waves flag of triumph*) and also, for reasons that will be immediately evident, this was a very emotionally trying chapter to write.
> 
> 2\. TRIGGER WARNINGS TRIGGER WARNINGS TRIGGER WARNINGS PLEASE SEE END NOTES IF YOU HAVE TRIGGERS OF ANY KIND

_Orphan in the storm, that's a role I've played before._  
_I've learned not to tremble when I hear the thunder roar._  
_I don't curse what I can't change, I just play the hand I'm dealt._  
_And when they lighten up the rations, I tighten up my belt._  
_I won't say I've never felt the pain, but I am not a stranger to the rain._

 -- "Stranger to the Rain," _Children of Eden_

**  
**

**December Part Five**

 

Time moved very quickly after that, swept up in a wave of finals. Éponine was grateful for them--it meant she could enjoy a brief burst of triumph when Bossuet, Joly, and Musichetta finally became the absurdly adorable threesome they should have become months ago and then throw herself into thinking about verb conjugation and directional derivatives before she could start feeling bitter. They all had two people who loved them that way, and she didn’t even have one, and that was a horrible thing to be thinking when the ABC were treating her like the hero of the story. Better not to think about it at all.

She was even grateful when she left campus too early to come to the ABC’s end-of-the-semester get-together. She knew perfectly well that Cosette would be there.

(The Facebook event description, written with great aplomb by Courfeyrac, read “Dear ABC + girlfriends.” She hoped that meant she was counted as part of the former group, not that she had been overlooked.

Bossuet’s all-caps comment of “I DISLIKE THIS AS MUCH AS R DISLIKES BAD OYSTERS” when she marked herself as not going--a comment liked by Courfeyrac, Grantaire, Jehan, Musichetta, and even Enjolras of all people--did a lot to further that hope. It would have done more if Marius had liked it, too.)

\--

 **From Gavroche:** _btw its a different house than it was last time_  
**From Éponine:** _Of course it is. Where?_  
**From Gavroche:** _kind of a shady area_  
**Éponine:** _I mean how do I get there from the train station?  
_**Gavroche:** _long walk? medium cab ride? idk lady you do you_

Éponine sent a picture of her irritated face.

 **Gavroche:** _your face looks better than usual :D :D  
_ **Éponine:** _yeah, well, your face looks like a little blank black space_

She hadn’t updated the contact picture for his new number, mostly because there were no pictures of her family on her phone.

 **Éponine:** _no, seriously, where's the new place?_

Gavroche sent a map with a dropped pin.

 **Éponine:** _see, THAT is useful._  
**Gavroche:** _UNLIKE YOUR FACE_  
**Éponine:** _My face is useful. It consumes oxygen and calories. And produces carbon dioxide and vocals._  
**Gavroche:** _so does a dying ant_  
**Éponine:** _Oooh, burn. :P_  
**Gavroche:** _yes fire does that too_  
**Gavroche:** _your face is basically an ant on fire_  
**Éponine:** _But do ants consume calories and produce vocals while on fire?_  
**Éponine:** _...okay, they probably produce vocals._  
**Gavroche:** _technically yes_  
**Gavroche:** _since fire uses calories_

Not for the first time, Éponine wished she could introduce Gavroche to the ABC. They would love him so much that she suspected someone (probably Courfeyrac) would try to start a petition to allow minors into college a cappella. No doubt he would come up with a memorable speech about fighting ageism and hitting the high notes.

Thinking of the ABC, she glanced at the GroupMe’s, which she had by necessity muted during finals. She could already tell she was never going to get through the backlog, which included a debate between Joly and Courfeyrac about the merits of umbrellas, an extended ramble from Grantaire about how wonderful Turkish culture was and how depressing it was that Turkey had “modernized” by eradicating said culture, and more about this Cabuc guy.

In between an extended debate about whether the term “musical secret santa” was “too Christo-centric” (seriously, the words these people came up with), her search for her own name had a single hit:

 **Ducky:** _We should add Cosette. I don't want her to feel left out because everyone likes 'Ponine more._  
**Combeferre:** _I don’t see how you can make that comparison. Only one of them is a member of this group._  
**Courfycat:** _We can add girlfriends! That just means more music to go around!_  
**R:** _Hot damn!_  
**Courfycat:** _FOR FUCK’S SAKE IT IS DECEMBER IT IS NOT FUNNY LET IT GO._  
**Jolllllllllllly:** _I think it’s funny._  
**Courfycat:** _You are a biased source._

She snorted and typed out a message.

 **Not Ophelia:** _I missed the memo on the Secret Secular Santa. (Also, Ducky?)  
_ **R:** _You get a person, you give a song. Theoretically a song that reminds you of them but like, whatever you want._

She checked her email. She had gotten Enjolras. She knew jack-shit about Enjolras. Also, she didn't have iTunes and she doubted the new house had wifi, so how was she supposed to send him a song anyway? YouTube, she supposed, but that brought her back to the knowing jack-shit about Enjolras bit.

Well, she could deal with that later. For now, it was time to surrender the train station wifi and start walking.

\--

The new house was a new apartment, which wasn’t especially surprising. When Éponine knocked, Gavroche came flying to the door: she could tell his speed from the sound of his shouted, "Éponine's home!" going from far away to right in her ear when the door opened. He blinked when he saw her. "Who are you and why are you so much hotter than my sister?"

"Who are you and why are you so much taller than my brother?" she retorted. "Also, even more hair." She tugged at the tips and he batted her hand away, making a face.

Azelma came next, slow, her smile small. Éponine's first thought upon seeing her sister was that she had gotten smaller--but no, of course that made no sense, it was just that she was the only one of the three who hadn't gotten bigger. Éponine reached out for a hug. Azelma clasped her wrist instead, fingers cold and timid. "I missed you," she said quietly, like it was something to be ashamed of.

"I," but Éponine abruptly realized that if she answered, _"I missed you too,"_ which she had, she would start crying. She had never gone this long without seeing Azelma before. She had never gone two days without seeing Azelma before: the others disappeared sometimes; Gavroche running away from home, her parents leaving for whatever work they were doing at the time. But Azelma had been constant, until Éponine hadn't been.

"Oh, Christ, are we gonna make this all mushy?" Gavroche demanded, rolling his eyes grandly at the ceiling.

"Are Mom and Dad home?"

"Nope." He sounded very satisfied. "Want to tour the jail cell?"

Azelma frowned. "It isn't that bad."

It was that bad. There were rust stains on the bathroom floor and windows that looked into the hallway instead of out onto anything that might have provided natural light. The room she, Azelma, and Gavroche were expected to share didn't have windows at all. "It's good," said Azelma. "We don't have to worry about being shot."

"We're on the fourth floor with no elevator, who's going to shoot us anyway?" Gavroche demanded. "But the best part!" he said gleefully, "by which I mean the only good part. Come here." He tugged Éponine to one corner and showed her how to hack a neighbor's wifi. Her phone immediately pinged.

 **Ducky:** _Bossuet changed my name and I don’t know how to change it back someone please help me :(_  
**R:** _Sorry, Ducky, him touching a piece of technology and not destroying it was a sacred event. We have to immortalize it. This may never happen again._

“What’s funny?” Gavroche demanded. “Who’s making you laugh who isn’t me? We already agreed no dating until you’re forty. Remember how we agreed on that?”

“I remember how you said it and I laughed at you?” Éponine had been dating, or something like it, since she was fourteen. Gavroche didn't actually care. It was just a running joke of theirs: if Éponine (who had changed his diapers, thankyouverymuch) was going to act like a mom, then Gavroche insisted upon acting like a dad. His ideas of parenting came mostly from tv shows from back when they had a tv, so this involved a lot of Gavroche shouting _"go to your room!"_ even though they had been sharing a room since the family inn shut down.

“You laughed with TACKIT AGREEMENT.”

“I think it’s pronounced tacit, actually.”

“Maybe at _Harvard_ it is.”

“I don’t go to Harvard.”

“You basically go to Harvard. I mean, those fancy schools are all the same, right?”

At this point, the only acceptable thing to do was to defend her school’s honor by beginning a tickle war. She lost, but it was the principle of the matter.

***

Her parents came home late. Azelma, Éponine, and Gavroche sat on the floor, Azelma listening raptly to her stories about the ABC and making faces when Gavroche interrupted, which was often. He seemed particularly interested in Bahorel, which Éponine should have seen coming.

Éponine's father looked older, or at least, he had more facial hair. He looked a little confused when she hugged him, but he didn't object. He even patted her a little awkwardly on the back. He smelled like beer, which wasn't a bad thing; he had always smelled like beer. It was a familiar smell, from the days when she sat on his lap and he taught her how to lie.

Éponine's mother stood in the doorway, hands propped on her broad hips, wig tilting off her head. "You've gained weight."

"Seriously?" Gavroche blurted. Their mother crinkled her nose in the way she did when Gavroche talked, like a fly had landed on her face and she couldn't slap it without hitting her own face, but she certainly didn't want it there.

Gavroche had a point. Éponine was at most a quarter of her mom's girth, and much better proportioned. _("Proportioned in a way that society deems better fit for women,"_ corrected the tiny ABC boy living in her brain.)

"She looks fine, love," said Mr. Thenardier.

Mrs. Thenardier's lips thinned. "You know how these rich folks are. A lady has to be skinny as a rail to get their sympathy or fat as a cow so they just want her to go away, she looks... _healthy."_

"No, it's a good thing!" He smiled encouragingly. He had a new fake tooth. It was whiter than the other teeth. "She don't just look healthy, she looks _respectable."_

Mrs. Thenardier's eyes shifted from narrow to speculative. She traced her eyes up Éponine's body. "I suppose we can work with this."

"Welcome home, sis," Gavroche muttered.

\--

To the Physics GroupMe, whose existence was now pointless since the semester was over but which remained the fastest way she could think to relay the question without a texting plan:

 **Not Ophelia:** _R, any chance you feel like sending Enjolras a song for me?_  
**R:** _aww, best Christmas present ever and I’m not even goyim_  
**R:** _So what do I give Jehan?_  
**Not Ophelia:** _Any chance you can send him Kid by Cry Cry Cry?  
_**R:** _Can do._

It was one of the songs she and Gavroche sang together. She was surprised by how easily she suggested it; usually it was a song she was protective of.

\--

Montparnasse was on her first heist of winter break. He looked as beautiful as always, and as aware of his beauty: clothing spotless, every strand of glossy dark hair perfectly in place. His deep green eyes gleamed at the sight of her. “Always a pleasure,” he crooned, reaching out to take her hand as if they were in an old movie and she would allow him to kiss it.

She snatched her wrist away and curled her lip. “We have a job to do,” she reminded him, rubbing her wrist as if the light brush of his fingers had left stains.

\--

 **Eagle:** _Hi Ponine! Miss you. :)_

She highly doubted he missed her. She doubted he had the energy to miss her; he had two significant others and two best friends to miss. She certainly didn’t have the energy to miss most of them. It was all being spent on other things.

Marius was the exception, but he barely counted. She had been missing him for months.

\--

“Is Azelma quieter?” she asked Gavroche, sitting in an alley sharing a sandwich he had stolen.

“You just asked me whether a mouse has gotten more like a mouse.” He took a much bigger bite than she had taken, but it was his theft, so fair enough.

Éponine frowned.

“It’s not her, it’s you.”

“Gee, thanks.” She nibbled at the sandwich. Cold ham and fancy mustard. She had described the dining halls in great detail several times; she was starting to remember her descriptions better than the actual meals, and it had only been a week.

“Have you seen yourself? You’re like, glowing. Super out of place.”

She frowned again, handing the sandwich back. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s _awesome,”_ he said. “You’re gonna go be an engineer and make all of us look bad. Just, you know.” He tore off a crust and shoved it in his mouth, speaking before swallowing. “Makes us look bad.”

“You’re probably going to be a lawyer.”

“No, I’m gonna be the best cat burglar this side of Boston.”

“Do you have any idea where Boston is?”

He shrugged. “Not my fault no one ever taught me.”

\--

The email in her inbox on the day before Christmas was from Cosette. She didn't open it.

\--

Christmas was always a good day for business. Lots of strangers opening their pockets. Her parents and Azelma dressed as beggars, as usual. It wasn't that far off, anyway.

Éponine no longer had to. Now she was "collecting donations for children in need."

Gavroche, dressed as a little elf with bells on his shoes, raked in more profits than the rest of them combined. Éponine knew for a fact that he stole some of the money to buy food for street children, though whether it was because he cared about them or because he didn't feel like handing the money over to their parents was anyone's guess.

“We’ll buy a feast with this!” her father exulted, running his skinny, dirty fingers through the cash.

“Be reasonable,” Mrs. Thenardier scolded. “We need to save up.”

“It’s Christmas,” said Gavroche, probably just to argue with his mother, dare her to look at him. She never did, as if she thought she could will him out of existence with the sheer force of her silence. As if anyone could. Gavroche was a whirlwind, bringing happiness to those he cared for, anger to those he didn’t, energy to all. Some days, when her body felt so heavy she thought she might collapse, Gavroche was all that gave Éponine energy.

“Yeah, Christmas, so let’s just find some suckers giving food away!”

Éponine looked down at herself. Too curvy to be starving. Too slender to be stuck with dollar-menu meals. Too pretty to be poor. “I’ll steal you a turkey,” Gavroche told her.

Back in their room, she pressed herself into the corner with wifi, waving her phone around until she found the signal. The ABC GroupMe was abuzz with reactions to the Secret Santa songs. Apparently in not reading the full conversation, she had missed the fact that there was a way to send the songs anonymously. Good thing she had asked Grantaire.

 **Combeferre:** _I presume “Why Don’t You Do Right” was Courfeyrac’s responsibility, and I can’t say I disapprove._  
**Courfycat:** _You know what I approve of? Whoever sent me “Get Lucky.”_  
**Jehan:** _I got a beautiful love song!_  
**Eagle:** _Of course you did._  
**R:** _Baldy I know you gave me “Shots” you little shit_  
**R:** _(Also, LFMAO two years in a row? Creatively bankrupt much?)_  
**Eagle:** _Yeah like you didn’t give me “Clumsy”_  
**Eagle:** _(Tell me “I’m Sexy and I Know It” wasn’t perfect for Courf. I dare you.)_  
**R:** _You know who I gave music to, you great bald moron. Although hats off to whoever came up with “Clumsy.”_  
**R:** _(See, I can take my hat off, because I have hair.)_  
**Eagle:** _Yes. Yes, take your hat off, for all our sakes. For the sake of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Dead One._  
**Jollllllllllllllllllly:** _Clumsy was Musichetta’s idea. She asked me to do the submission._  
**Eagle:** _That’s so sweet!_  
**R:** _I’m really sensing a double standard here._

Cosette hadn’t bothered to get someone to do an anonymous submission, Éponine thought, not sure if it made her feel resentful or just viciously satisfied.

 **Ducky:** _Sorry I couldn’t figure out how to do the anonymous submission :(_

Oh. Not Cosette’s fault, after all.

 **Ducky:** _Ponine, did you like your song?_

Éponine nearly dropped the phone.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was just asking because Cosette had asked him to ask, but wasn’t that worth something? That Cosette thought them close enough for her to ask him Éponine’s opinion.

No, she was just overthinking things. Probably.

She logged into her email anyway.

_Dear Eponine,_

_I know we don’t know each other very well, but Marius (and everyone in the ABC, really) has said lovely things about you. Some of the stories made me think of this song. Merry Christmas!_

_Love,_

_Cosette_

She let herself indulge in everything annoying about the email: the assumption that Éponine celebrated Christmas, the ease with which Cosette threw around the word “love,” the spelling “Eponine,” the fact that she thought they didn’t know each other. Then she listened to the song.

Her instinct was to be annoyed again. The whole song seemed to be about passively and steadfastly accepting sorrow, which, who was Cosette to judge that she had an unhappy life? And who was she to judge whether Éponine wanted tears shed for her? Was there actually anything admirable about being left in the rain and claiming, _“I’ll turn my face into the spray,”_ or was it just a soothing story the dry ones told themselves?

She particularly took objection to the verse, _“and to the boy who’s given me the sweetest love I’ve known, I wish for him another love, so he won’t be alone.”_ It felt like Cosette simultaneously acknowledging her feelings for Marius and thanking her for not minding their relationship, with all the presumption and condescension of someone who wrote letters about their failures and incompetence with phrases like “thanks for understanding,” without giving her the option to decide for herself whether or not she fucking understood.

Éponine did enjoy the line, _“and when the storm comes crashing on the plain, I will dance before the lightning to music sacred and profane.”_ But. That was just one line.

When the song ended, she blinked several times, but she didn’t cry. She also didn’t delete the email, but no one needed to know that.

***

Gavroche found her huddled, staring at her phone with bleary eyes. The Facebook picture was from Thanksgiving: Cosette, an old white-haired man, and Marius, seated at a grand table covered in food.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Gavroche when he saw the look on Éponine’s face. He snatched the phone.

“Hey!” shrieked Éponine, scrambling to her feet and chasing Gavroche as he sprinted from the room, phone held aloft in his hand.

“Too slow, can’t catch,” he chanted, ducking under her arm and racing in the opposite direction.

There wasn’t much room to run in the tiny apartment, so it took all of four seconds for Mrs. Thenardier to shout, “what’s this nonsense?” and pluck the phone from Gavroche’s hand, scolding, “quit harassing your sister, she’s here for three weeks, you little--”

She froze, eyes on the screen. When she whispered, “I never forget a face,” Éponine felt her stomach sink.

“It’s just some kids from school. They have nothing to do with us,” she protested, even as her mother turned to her father and barked, “look here!”

Her father was extremely drunk at this point, leaning back in his chair in a manner Grantaire could have pulled off, but he could not: when he tried to rise, he tumbled to the floor, chair smacking him on its way down. Gavroche laughed. Éponine grabbed at the phone, even knowing it was useless. Mrs. Thenardier ignored all three, simply waving the phone and repeating, _“look.”_

For a moment that felt longer than it could possibly have been, he peered at the phone with pinched eyes. Éponine wanted to believe there might be hope, but she knew her parents too well for that.

His face cleared in a moment, lips curling into something too vicious to be a smile. “That man!” He jabbed the phone screen. “That smug bastard walked in and bought Cosette for nothing, and now he’s some big-shot senator, living with the child of a prostitute! How would his fancy political career fare if they knew he bought his daughter?”

Cosette had been the daughter of one of the sex workers trafficked in their inn. Éponine recalled little of the woman, who had been Thai or Filipina, and very young when she died. She remembered ugly, stunted Cosette with her giant eyes and ragged clothes, and she remembered the man’s warm voice and well-made clothes.

Her father bared his teeth in a grin, twitching with such glee she was surprised he wasn’t rubbing his hands together. “Oh, this is perfect. ’Ponine, what a _treasure_ you’ve found.”

Everyone was so happy with Éponine lately. Marius, grateful for her bringing Cosette to him when she felt sick every time she saw them together. The ABC, thrilled with her for running their sound when she couldn’t even get all the mics to work, proud of her bringing Musichetta and Joly and Bossuet together when her role had primarily consisted of threats and manipulation and waving a knife. And now this.

Éponine used to enjoy when people were happy with her.

“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll write a letter, polite little thing, just reminding him of secrets shared and debts owed, and you’ll--”

“No.”

He bristled. “Say again?”

“No.” Her voice sounded very loud in her ears, perhaps because of the rushing blood. “They’ve done nothing. They owe us _nothing.”_

He raised his hand. Éponine refused to look at it. She kept her eyes on his forehead, rumpled with anger or confusion. When he was drunk, the two often amounted to the same thing. “Fine,” he growled between his teeth. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

“No you won’t. You’ll leave them alone, or I’ll call the police.” She met his eyes now. She knew her parents, but they knew her: it was clear from his eyes that he was not too drunk to know she meant it.

His hand slammed down, striking her mouth. Éponine was relieved he had finally gotten to it. Anticipation of being hit was always so much worse than actually being hit. “Bitch!” he shouted.

Her eyes had closed automatically when his hand swung. She opened her eyes. “Alright. I’m a bitch. I’m a bitch who knows every crime you’ve ever committed.” She spat her blood on the ground. Her head felt light. Dizzy.

“What’s this nonsense?” her mother demanded.

Éponine traced her tongue along the inside of her mouth, finding the tear. Her mother stepped forward. Mrs. Thenardier was taller and broader than Mr. Thenardier, and clearly trying to be menacing.

When Éponine laughed, her father flinched. Maybe the blood on her teeth made her a frightful sight. Good. “You think I’m afraid of you?” she cried.

This time it was Mrs. Thenardier’s hand that came down, but it didn’t manage to land: Gavroche lunged, nails digging into her wrist. She howled in pain and flung him to the ground. When she hit Éponine, her hand left a streak of blood. Éponine felt it through the throb of pain, warm and damp.

It was a wonder that she feared pain sometimes. It was just another sensation.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she shouted in her mother’s face. “I’m not!”

“Get out,” Mrs. Thenardier gasped out.

“What?”

“Get out of my house! Come back when you’re ready to behave like a proper daughter.”

The emotional part of Éponine was already flat, stunned away by the blow. Her thoughts raced--was there anything she needed to take with her? Of course not. She didn’t own anything. “Give back my phone.”

Her mother threw it at her. It hit her collarbone, a sharper sort of pain than the slaps had been. Éponine caught it as it fell. She glanced back at the door. She had some clothing. Not much.

“You’ll take nothing else of ours,” her mother raged. “There’s nothing you own we didn’t give you, you’re lucky to be stealing the clothes on your back and the phone in your hand, how much money it cost--”

Gavroche pulled his body from the floor and started to lunge. “Don’t,” said Éponine. Her voice sounded far away to her ears, but it must have been audible, because Gavroche stopped.

“This has gotten out of hand,” said her father, his tone suddenly gentle. Placating. “So you don’t want us to bother this man? But we must live, we must eat. We’re your family, ’Ponine, have you forgotten so quickly?”

She blinked at him. Her mouth tasted like metal.

Joly had told her that blood didn’t actually taste like copper. It tasted like iron. When she tried to visualize the rust in the bathroom, her memory presented her with dried blood.

Maybe she had forgotten.

“What does family even mean to you?” Gavroche shouted. He wasn’t looking at Mr. Thenardier. He was looking at Azelma, who stood in the corner of the room. Éponine hadn’t realized she was there.

“You leave the old man and the girl alone,” she said, amazed at herself, amazed at the steel and iron and blood in her voice, “and I leave you alone.”

“Get out,” Mrs. Thenardier repeated.

When Éponine left, Gavroche went with her. He brought her coat, which contained everything she needed: wallet, id, two knives. She had forgotten.

She didn’t stop walking. Didn’t thank him.

She was still dressed to collect donations. That was good. It meant there were no holes in her clothes. Her feet were bare. That was also good. The gravel under her feet reminded her that she was real.

“That,” said Gavroche, “was fucking awesome.”

“You should go back,” Éponine replied.

Gavroche made a sound of glorious disdain.

“You should,” she repeated, the reality of Gavroche’s situation cracking through the armor of courage. “I can leave in two weeks. The ticket is already bought. You--”

“I would rather be _anywhere else.”_

She stopped walking. “Gavroche, you can’t just--”

“Seriously? I can’t just? You don’t get to be the only badass in the fam, you know.”

Éponine laughed.

“What?”

Eventually, between laughs, she managed to gasp out, “you said ‘fam.’” She kept laughing until she started coughing, and she kept coughing until her chest rattled with it.

Gavroche watched. “Has it occurred to you,” he asked when Éponine finally stopped laughing, “that you might be crazy?”

“A few times,” she admitted. “My friends get all cranky when you use that word, though.”

“The weird singing kids who are allergic to microphones?”

She nodded.

“Cool. So where are we going?”

Two weeks. She hadn’t really thought about it. She had been homeless for longer. “You should go back,” she repeated.

“You don’t actually think that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you aren’t actually _stupid.”_

Éponine fell silent. Where to go? Somewhere her brother could have a bed. Who did they know with a bed? “We can go to Montparnasse.”

“Um. Doesn’t he have the hots for you? Like, big time?”

“He tries anything, I cut his hand off,” she lied smoothly.

He raised one eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

Two weeks. Two weeks, and it could be so much worse. He wasn’t that old, only in his thirties. He wasn’t...well, his violence wouldn’t apply to her, probably. He had beds. And food.

Two weeks wasn’t very long. “I’m sure,” she said, softly.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” he sighed.

\--

Jehan had sent Éponine an email, a short clip that she had held off watching because she didn’t want it tainted with where she was. But it was New Year’s Eve, and Montparnasse was out doing what he described to Gavroche as “things.” She lay in Gavroche’s bed, because she didn’t have to be in Montparnasse’s tonight. Her phone buzzed with “happy new year!” messages from the GroupMe. Combeferre, having iMessage, had sent her one directly.

It was probably of the party at the end of the semester, since it was the triumvirate house and everyone was there. Everyone including Musichetta, snuggled against Joly, who was snuggled against Bossuet. Grantaire lay near them, one arm wrapped around Bossuet’s leg as he held a wine bottle in his free hand.

The clip was very, very brief: Bossuet’s glass was lifted; he was clearly mid-sentence, and the sentence ended, “to Éponine.”

“Hear fucking hear,” Grantaire agreed, raising his bottle. The camera swiveled to show all the raised glasses. Combeferre and Enjolras’s mugs of tea were raised as well.

The email was brief and simple: “Just wanted to let you know you’ve got some ABC fans yourself. :) Happy new year. <3”

She smiled and rolled over in bed, pressing her face into a pillow that smelled like her brother instead of like Montparnasse. Two weeks was an incredibly long time, but it was nice knowing she had something to come home to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS: domestic violence, a young (but not under eighteen) girl sleeping with an older man when she would prefer not to, mention of human trafficking and sex work
> 
> END NOTES:
> 
> 1\. I'm sorry.
> 
> 2\. So I know what you are thinking--WHAT KIND OF ENDING WAS THAT?? Well, all along you thought you were reading a fanfic, when you were mostly reading a prequel. The REAL STORY is the second-semester ['Ponine-POV fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4225680/chapters/9555492) and the [Enjolras-POV companion piece.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3624852/chapters/8003484) If you have not decided to quit this series forever (which, let's face it, I wouldn't blame you), I HIGHLY RECOMMEND subscribing to the series instead of just this fic, because from here on out the updates will be divided between the two.
> 
> 3\. No, I'm *really* sorry.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Artwork for "You want a (revolution)" series by SecondSecret](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742294) by [elentari7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elentari7/pseuds/elentari7)
  * [You want a (revolution) [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3830170) by [elentari7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elentari7/pseuds/elentari7)




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